Masliah Hotel

Corner site, at the junction of Jean Jaures and San Luis streets, in the Abasto neighborhood. Famous neighborhood for being in the area where the tango singer Carlos Gardel, known as El Morocho del Abasto ("the dark-haired guy from Abasto"), lived most of his life. Few blocks away from the Abasto Shopping, that used to be the central wholesale fruit and vegetable market in Buenos Aires, Argentina, from 1893 to 1984. Since 1999, it has served as a shopping mall. The party consists of a ground floor that occupies the whole lot and 3 uppers floors that form a U plan of rooms around an open patio. The total area is 5.000m2, including the underground parking. The lobby and restaurant are located on the ground floor, the 42 rooms are located in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd floor and the fourth floor is large garden-terrace. The Hotel is erected around a large courtyard located on the 1st floor; it breaks into a smaller size yard on the ground floor. From the 1st to the 4th floor the empty space is more important than the constructed mass; on the ground floor the proportion is reversed. The unique courtyard opens to Jean Jaures Street on levels 1 and 2, and is closed in the 3rd level where a room crosses as a bridge. The sides facing each other are occupied by the rooms, in one case leading directly onto the patio, in the other through the horizontal circulation. The 4th side, opposite Jean Jaures, is occupied by the vertical circulation of the building, featuring a glass elevator that rises from the ground floor patio. The rooms’ facades, which open to the inner patio and to San Luis Street, are covered with a mesh made of aluminium bars with pots on each floor, which in the coming years will be covered in plants as a green façade.