Port of Recall

A new neighbourhood in Buenos Aires is the laboratory for a bold urban-planning experiment. Does the rest of this august city even know?

Story by Charlene Rooke

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When I think of Buenos Aires, I recall a smell: a spice note that’s not overbearing like incense; a hint of lilac without cloying sweetness; welcoming but altogether unfamiliar. It has the seductive complexity of expensive votives sold in boutiques as hushed as churches, candles costing as much as a nice bottle of wine but with a more lingering finish.

But where is the aroma of woody char from parilla fires roasting primitive spits of meat? The human musk of too many bodies in crowded bars and subways? That ever-present waft of cigarette smoke? The dusty fragrance of leather shoes pounding cracked sidewalks? What I recall is not the overpowering cumulative sensation of sprawling, diverse Buenos Aires, but a small, exclusive sub-universe of it. The grandly named Faena Hotel + Universe, to be exact. Let me explain.

When I see the squat brick building, I think, Can this be it? But the lobby of the Faena immediately transports me from the outside world – where small children juggled balls and hawked flowers for coins at intersections; where the airport cab driver ripped me off, badly – to a much more civilized place. I’ve seen a lot of hotel lobbies, but there’s a reason this one is called the Cathedral and all the staff sport dark suits and hushed tones. An 80-metre exposed brick hallway, stained glass, a stripe of ruby carpet, black and gold furniture and that smell, which seems to emanate from the lobby’s rich wood, velvet drapes and Philippe Starck tchotchkes (faux tree stumps, garden gnomes). I should ask my “experience manager” (a personal concierge) how they pump it in.

The Faena is the heart of newly cool Puerto Madero, a circa 1887 port district on the Río de la Plata at the city’s eastern edge. Buenos Aires quickly outgrew the port’s freight capacity, but more than a century later the warehouses, bridges linking to downtown and nearby nature reserve are the perfect infrastructure for a new, modern kind of commerce. Tourism. Creative and high-tech business. Condominiums. Alan Faena, a former fashion entrepreneur and ruler of this Universe, is developing the half-dozen more buildings in El Porteño Art District (porteño means Buenos Aires native), humbly projected to launch a cultural renaissance for the entire city.

I stroll Puerto Madero on a sunny spring day, watching joggers prop each other up while doing quad stretches and couples push elaborate strollers on quaint cobblestone paths. I have a jet lag displacement moment where I ask myself, Where am I, Yaletown in Vancouver? No Starbucks, it can’t be… But nothing is quite as it seems in this brand-new barrio. The cobblestones are so new that piles of them wait to be pieced into a waterfront promenade. Streets are named for Argentinian women instead of great men or revolutions. Expensive steak houses and bars mix with postmodern condos and offices. It will take me a day or two to realize this is the safest place in the city; nowhere else are bicycles safe from aggressive traffic or do khaki-uniformed guards stand on every corner. (Turns out they’re not police or even security guards, but the coast guard.)

I pick a glass-fronted café for a bite of lunch and maybe a glass of wine. A shiny, expensive motorcycle is parked in the middle of the room, its brand logo prominently visible. After the waiter ignores me for 10 minutes, I get up and leave – the motorbike commanded more attention. Later, I wander into what looks like an upscale home decor boutique. It takes me several minutes to detect discreet swooshes and realize it’s creating a subliminal need for Nikes. Life and commerce are rubbing up awkwardly against each other in Puerto Madero, quickly getting acquainted.

A few months before, another strange experiment in life and commerce happened when Red Passion premiered at the Faena cabaret. The musical, which shares its name with an aperitif, was conceived by Campari and a part of the Universe called the Laboratory of Experimental Art (or LEA, its Spanish acronym). LEA also created a multimedia art show called Heineken Inspire and an installation for Coca-Cola.

Over brunch one day, I learn more from the lovely dark-haired Florencia Vrljicak, an excitable publicist for the mythical Alan Faena. “LEA is really what will help us fulfill our cultural mandate,” she explains, fleshing out the plan for a 3.2-million-square-foot district including exhibition space, luxury apartments and offices comprising “the first digital city in Latin America” – sponsored by Intel, naturally. As she breathlessly explains that “Alan created the hotel as an embassy for his ideas” and that “Alan can plan almost with an urban eye,” I start to wonder what Faena puts in the staff Kool-Aid. Perhaps that heady, intoxicating smell makes them so giddy.

So is Puerto Madero a modern barrio urban planned by a private company? Or the world’s first corporate-sponsored neighbourhood? The old-fashioned tourism model of castle-style hotel, casino, and ski slope/beach has been replaced by a more sophisticated Lego kit including renovated heritage buildings, a bone-white Santiago Calatrava footbridge, Norman Foster architecture and TGI Friday’s and Asia de Cuba franchises. Whatever it is, after a couple days, I’m bored there and eager to explore what one resident told me is a “city of neighbourhoods. You proclaim who you are by where you live.”

The taxi carves a U-turn across three lanes, goes briefly the wrong way down an off-ramp, then joins the flow of breakneck expressway traffic. My forehead is clammy, and not just from the heat. I’m on my way back from MALBA, an exquisite private modern art museum, a pretty good café and a shop that sells overpriced English-language copies of InStyle like it was some kind of haute bible. My taxi driver doesn’t even know where the Faena is but sure seems annoyed that it’s way out in the Universe of Puerto Madero.

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