The force behind Buenos Aires' famed Faena Hotel + Universe talks about remaking neighborhoods, working with Philippe Starck and Norman Foster, and how to survive the coming bad times.

Point of Origin: I started in the fashion world, then sold my fashion company Via Vai and took three years off, a sabbatical of sorts, just really spending time at my beach house [in Jose Ignacio, Uruguay], gardening, taking care of the plants, enjoying my free time. Buenos Aires needed a place for people to congregate, a place for local people to meet up with people from the rest of the world. The city was in the midst of a rebirth after a really profound [economic and political] crisis, and I found a part of Buenos Aires that was abandoned completely, that didn’t even exist really. I found it inspiring to be able to invent a neighborhood from scratch. The focal point of the new neighborhood would be this hotel in an old, abandoned grain warehouse. And that was the beginning of the transformation of this entire neighborhood, Puerto Madero.