iHouse estudio completes Casa Anja, a 158 m² retreat in a Uruguayan pine forest

Casa Anja stands on 158 square metres in a pine forest in La Barra, Punta del Este, and iHouse estudio completed the house in 2023. Lead architects Andrés García and Marcelo Mederos designed it as a holiday retreat for a family. Aldo Lanzi photographed the project.

The architects' own text frames the design intent plainly. The house, they write, is "envisioned for the summer months, winter breaks, and weekend getaways" and "proposes a direct relationship with the landscape, treating the existing vegetation not as a constraint but as the starting point for the project."

That single sentence carries the project's argument. Sites in La Barra come with mature pines, and many practices clear them. García and Mederos inverted the sequence: the forest came first, the plan second.

What does the site-first approach change for practitioners?

Everything in the brief follows from vegetation. A retreat used intermittently — summers, winter breaks, weekends — does not need the orientation logic of a full-time house. It needs framed views, shade from the canopy, and openings that register the forest rather than a neighbouring plot.

By naming the pines as the starting point, the architects set a constraint that disciplines the section and the envelope. The 158-square-metre area stays modest for a family retreat, which suggests compact circulation and rooms that borrow atmosphere from the trees rather than from square footage.

For designers working on similar coastal-forest sites in the region, Casa Anja offers a working model: read the vegetation survey before the massing study.

Which manufacturers supplied the project?

The material palette, documented through the manufacturer list, spans five suppliers:

• Vibia — lighting
• Aluminios del Uruguay — aluminium systems
• Maguinor Maderas — timber
• Manto — exterior surfaces
• Silestone — engineered stone countertops

The combination reads as regional practice. Aluminium and timber together suit a salt-air, forest-edge climate where steel corrodes and mass timber weathers. Silestone in kitchens and baths matches the low-maintenance logic of a house occupied in bursts and closed for weeks between visits.

Who built it and when?

iHouse estudio, the architecture firm behind the project, assigned lead roles to Andrés García and Marcelo Mederos. The 2023 completion places Casa Anja within the recent wave of Punta del Este-area retreats, where La Barra in particular attracts second homes that must perform across seasons.

A holiday house used year-round in short intervals is harder to design than a summer-only cabin. It must handle humidity when empty, heat when full, and the transitions between. The manufacturer choices — engineered stone, aluminium, treated timber — point to that durability brief.

The project adds to the record of a firm working at residential scale in Uruguay, documented by photographer Aldo Lanzi, and gives practitioners a reference for forest-edge siting at under 200 square metres.