Alvear Tower

Alvear Tower is a residential and hotel skyscraper in Puerto Madero, the upscale waterfront district of Buenos Aires, Argentina. It has 54 storeys and is the tallest building in Argentina. The tower stands on Azucena Villaflor Avenue, east of Dock Two, and its design is made of white banded cylinders of different heights joined by slots of dark green glass.

The 70,000 square metre building includes 175 condominiums and a five-star hotel. Construction started in March 2012 and finished in 2017, with a budget of about 130 million US dollars. The apartments vary a lot in size, and the rooms have high 3.3-metre ceilings.

From one hotel plan to another

The site covers 7,000 square metres. A local builder, Grupo Château, sold it for 35 million US dollars to Rayet, a developer from Madrid, which planned a hotel called Hotel Único Buenos Aires. That project was cancelled. On 5 March 2010 Rayet sold the land to David Sutton, the Anglo-Argentine owner of the Alvear Palace Hotel, and he built the Alvear Tower.

Inside

The 175 condominiums add up to 34,000 square metres, and their floor plans are noted for variety. The hotel is a five-star hotel, so the tower mixes homes and visitors. The tall ceilings and big windows over the river and the city are part of its luxury, in a district with docks that were turned into homes and restaurants.

Look of the tower

The tower looks like a bundle of tall white tubes with horizontal bands, set at different heights, with dark green glass between them. Because the tubes stop at different levels, the top of the building looks stepped and uneven instead of flat. That also makes it easy to recognise on the Buenos Aires skyline.

On the globe

The model shows white banded cylinders of different heights joined by dark green glass slots. Look for the stack of rounded shapes.