Médano El Pinar

The last project designed by renowned architect Rafael Viñoly, Médano El Pinar is an innovative, ultra-sustainable, luxury, multi-family residential development that is sited just 15 minutes outside of Montevideo, Uruguay, on the only property in “Greater Montevideo” that is not separated from the beach by a road.

The unique oceanfront location sits just behind the dunes on the edge of a low-rise residential neighborhood. The building’s long, low-slung, and sinewy shape integrates it with the organic landscape of its pristine setting to minimize its visual impact on the neighborhood and make it completely invisible from the public beach.

Approximately 120 beach-front units with 1 to 5 bedrooms are arranged along the building’s 425-meter length in a terraced configuration that affords almost all the apartments generously proportioned, open-to-the-sky gardens overlooking either the beach to the south or a large lagoon to the north. All south-facing units feature adjacent private parking areas or enclosed contiguous garages, and all north-facing units enjoy covered parking no further than 30 meters from their front doors.

The building’s unprecedented architecture means that no apartment sits on top of another. The large private gardens and meticulous attention to visual and acoustic isolation make each unit feel more like a free-standing house than an apartment. The sensation is amplified by direct access to each unit without need of a lobby. The project incorporates many of the hard-earned lessons of the Covid pandemic and offers all the advantages of independent living with all the comforts and conveniences of a high-touch serviced apartment building.

Médano El Pinar aims to be the first Nearly Zero-Energy Building and potentially carbon neutral construction in the region through the extensive use of locally sourced carbon sequestering building materials, utility-scale photovoltaic power generation, redundant centralized thermal plants, rainwater recapture, green roofing, heat pumps and ubiquitous cross ventilation.

The development’s radical sustainability combines with logically distributed and generously proportioned interiors that open to the large elevated private gardens with panoramic views to create an effect of “conscious luxury” – a feeling of being at one with nature and with oneself in an environment that supports resilience, harmony, and wellbeing without ever being – or feeling – frivolous or ostentatious.