The White Elephant in Buenos Aires (Villa Lugano)

The White Elephant was a semi-abandoned twelve-story building, located in Ciudad Oculta , in the neighborhood of Villa Lugano in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires . It was destined to be the largest hospital in Latin America, specializing in the treatment of tuberculosis. But after the military coup of 1955 it ended up incomplete and abandoned. ^{[ 1 ]}

It was completely demolished, manually, in October 2018, after the process that began in March of that year. ^{[ 2 ]} In its place is under construction the new headquarters of the Ministry of Human Development and Habitat of the Government of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, as well as a new public space in the villa 15. ^{[ 3 ] [ 4 ]}

The name by which it was known, since it never had an official one, comes from the fact that the term white elephant is frequently used in architecture to refer to large, problematic or obsolete structures that present high maintenance costs and difficulty to dismantle