It could be seen as a little forthright to write a memoir in your mid-50s. But Alan Faena gets away with it. The fashion designer turned real estate extraordinaire has packed more into his 55 years than most could in multiple lifetimes. In Alchemy & Creative Collaboration, Faena lavishly documents his journey from obscurity, to a galvanising international force in architecture, art, and hospitality, known for development work in his native Argentina, and his billion-dollar district in Miami.
To understand Faena is to understand his upbringing. In Buenos Aires, Argentina, where Faena was born, the 1960s arrived late. With mere glimpses of counter-culture and protest in the second half of the decade, those who participated in cultural and political change were forced underground or into exile by the mid-1970s. Born in 1963, Faena was a teenager when local creative youth first began to exercise their newfound freedom. He describes the early fashion shows of Via Vai (the label he founded aged 19), as ‘a chance for an entire generation to experiment with self-expression, quite often for the first time in their lives.’ His clothing became, in his words, ‘its own social movement’.
As Faena’s narrative unravels, it becomes increasingly memoir-worthy. Faena’s romance with Via Vai co-founder Paula Cahen d’Anvers is movie-love fated. When they separated, he sold the label because of a broken heart, despite its prestige as the first Argentinian fashion brand to garner significant international acclaim. ‘The clothes were just one ingredient to reach across all aspects of art and culture,’ he writes, hinting of his interdisciplinary ascension, just around the corner.
Not before a filmic, plot-twist stint as a gardener, however, to which a significant, 30-page chapter of the book is dedicated, suggesting its importance. In 1995, he moved to the Uruguayan coastline of Punta del Este, to grow roses by the sea in a remote and abandoned homestead owned by his fathers’ business associate. Of course, people thought he was crazy. ‘But that’s always been the case when I start a new chapter or project: most people immediately write off my dream as an impossibility; many ready to quash the idea as too risky or doomed to fail,’ Faena explains. ‘But I don’t dream small.’
After two-and-a-half years living in the curative gardens of Tierra Santa, Faena felt compelled to exercise his creative will in the ‘real world’ again, taking all he had learnt on Uruguay’s powerful shores, and reinvesting it in public expressions.
His mind moved towards the hospitality industry. With an idea to create a multifunctional cultural destination, he travelled back to Buenos Aires with one designer in mind to make his ambitions a reality: Philippe Starck, who Faena describes as ‘practically king of the world at the time’. Faena ‘courted’ him long-distance for the best part of a year, with photo-postcards of Buenos Aires, writing on each, ‘Philippe, Argentina needs you’. By 1999, with little more than ‘vision and sincerity’ it paid off, and the somewhat unlikely duo started work together, reinvigorating the then-derelict dockland of Puerto Madero. ‘This new space, I knew, would encompass all of my passions: design, culture, technology, art, architecture, food, taste, dancing, music, meaning, life. From day one, I saw it as building another paradise, just as I had done with Tierra Santa.’
Success after well-documented success followed. The Starck-designed Faena Hotel opened in October 2004; the waterfront Faena Art Center opened in 2001 inside one of Argentina’s famed flour mills; the Norman Foster-designed Faena Aleph Residences completed in January 2013 (marking Foster + Partners’ first project in Latin America). In all, the Faena District, (estimated to be a $200 million development), is the most valuable real estate in Buenos Aires.
Next stop, Miami; the US gateway to the dance, liason and intrigue of Latin America. ‘For many of us in Latin America, Miami is also seen as the gateway to the United States,’ Faena writes. He first visited as a child, and fell in love with its unique cultural codes, its glamour, and its comfortable familiarity: the blue horizon is the same as the one he sees from his stretch of beach in Punta del Esta.
Faena’s first Miami moment was the redevelopment of The Saxony (pictured above) in a then-forgotten area of Mid-Beach, which he would transform into a ‘place charged with energy and physical beauty’.
