Last week, on a stretch of waterfront that was once considered Buenos Aires's most desolate district, a new art center opened its doors as the anchor of an ambitious new arts and luxury complex. Called the Faena Arts Center, the space, and the complex, is the brainchild of Syrian-born entrepreneur and former fashion designer Alan Faena, who is these days best known as the perpetually white-suited proprietor of the five-star Faena Hotel + Universe just around the corner. The center's opening, which turned the spotlight on a sprawling new installation by Ernesto Neto, involved a performance by Marianne Faithful and brought in such Argentine luminaries as soccer legend Maradona.

Occupying the repurposed building of the former Los Molinos mill, a landmark from Argentina's Belle Epoque that once sent grain to World War II Europe, the four-story, $14 million museum was built by Miguel Angel McCormack & Partners in consultation with the Faena Group's team of architects, which includes Norman Foster. (The Pritzker Prize-winning architect is designing a high-rise residential tower as part of the larger district.) Floored in polished white stone, the center consists primarily of a first-floor exhibition space and a vaulted, 11,300-square-foot multipurpose art and performance gallery on the second floor.

At the moment, the only actual artworks in the space are two outdoor murals by Pablo Siquer, a hanging sculpture by Julio Le Parc, and, of course, the Neto. Titled "Crazy Hyperculture in the Vertigo of the World," the piece — curated by Jessica Morgan of the Tate — consists of a fantastical bridge made of woven climbing rope and hollow plastic balls, which rises off the ground in a rainbow of colors, spirals through the air, and then comes back down to the ground. The $500,000 artwork took two months for Neto and a team of 30 assistants to assemble. It is the first time that the artist has made a piece actually intended to support adventurous viewers, who can ascend into the structure.

"I think they are beginning with a very audacious sculpture," Neto said. "I am very proud to have been the first one to do something there. In the end you have people interacting with it, watching it, moving it, laying down on it, sleeping in it. I had this fantasy." The work will be up through January.

For Alan Faena's part, he used the Neto work's fantastical architecture as a metaphor for his ambitions for the surrounding complex in general. "For us, the sculpture is the totality of all the seven blocks that we have," he said. "Working with these great minds, like Foster, we will together create our piece of art." According to Faena, the art center will soon be joined by an outdoor sculpture park nearby.

The director of the Faena Arts Center, Ximena Caminos, spoke further about the vision for the site. "What I want to do is to bring a community of interesting people to the space, because the challenge is to make people feel they belong there — to adopt it," she said. "We want people to feel it's theirs, not ours." To this end there will be a series of artist talks and other public events, and the galleries will periodically be converted into artist studios. It will also be a place to show the winners of the five-year-old F a las Artes prize, which the Faena Group most recently awarded to Cuban artist Wilfredo Prieto. An exhibition of his work will go on view next year.