Luxury homes in Montevideo. The Edge Residences by Foster + Partners
06/04/2024.
[Montevideo] Uruguay
metalocus, NICOLÁS RUIZ CARRILLO
metalocus, NICOLÁS RUIZ CARRILLO
Description of project by Foster + Partners
The Edge, the practice’s first project in Uruguay, has broken ground. The luxury residential development is located on the Rambla Tomas Berreta in Montevideo’s Carrasco neighbourhood, which runs along the coast up to the eastern limits of Montevideo. Spanning 60-metres of picturesque coastline, it consists of eight residential units that wrap around a circular glass-walled courtyard, each with spectacular views of the water.
“We are delighted to see the practice’s first project in Uruguay coming to fruition. Our design seeks to offer the highest quality living experience, by perfectly balancing views, light, and green space.”
David Summerfield, Head of Studio, Foster + Partners
Connections with nature are established from the moment of arrival. Residents and visitors enter a light-filled lobby that opens onto the courtyard and shared garden beyond. The building’s split core allows for a natural separation to the apartment entrances, which are located on either side of the leafy central space with private access to the floors above.
Rendering. The Edge Residences by Foster + Partners.
The building features eight residential units in total, including two duplex apartments on the east and west edges. Breath-taking private rooftop gardens crown the top and every apartment is cross-ventilated and dual aspect, with views towards the beach and the lush gardens to the south. Located at the heart of the building, the glass-walled courtyard intersects with the central apartments, bringing natural light and greenery directly into their living spaces. The courtyard’s walls are made from textured cast glass that filters natural light into the living spaces while maintaining privacy for residents.
“The cast glass courtyard is at the heart of the design, bringing daylight and greenery directly into the building and creating a unique experience for the residents. Its sculptural quality underlines the project’s contemporary elegance.”
Juan Frigerio, Partner, Foster + Partners
A basement level provides a pool, sauna and gym, with steps up to the courtyard and shared garden.
White concrete is expressed on the building’s façade, reflecting the pale tones of Carrasco’s sandy beachfront. Terraces emphasise the low-rise building’s horizontality and provide private spaces to take in the views.
Norman Foster is considered by many to be the most prominent architect in Britain. He won the 1999 Pritzker Architecture Prize and the 2009 Príncipe de Asturias de las Artes Prize.
Lord Foster rebuilt the Reichstag as a new German Parliament in Berlin and designed a contemporary Great Court for the British Museum. He linked St. Paul's Cathedral to the Tate Modern with the Millennium Bridge, a steel footbridge across the Thames. He designed the Hearst Corporation Building in Manhattan, at 57th Street and Eighth Avenue.
He was born in Manchester, England, in 1935. Among his firm’s many other projects are London’s City Hall, the Bilbao Metro in Spain, the Canary Wharf Underground Station in London and the renovated courtyard of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery in Washington.
In the 1970s, Lord Foster was one of the most visible practitioners of high-tech architecture that fetishized machine culture. His triumphant 1986 Hong Kong and Shanghai bank building, conceived as a kit-of-parts plugged into a towering steel frame, was capitalism's answer to the populist Pompidou Center in Paris.
Nicolai Ouroussoff, The Times’s architecture critic, has written that although Lord Foster’s work has become sleeker and more predictable in recent years, his forms are always driven by an internal structural logic, and they treat their surroundings with a refreshing bluntness.
Awarded the Prince of Asturias of the Arts 2009.