ESO Hotel

ESO Hotel at Cerro Paranal (or Residencia) is the accommodation for Paranal Observatory in Chile since 2002. It is mainly used for the ESO (European Southern Observatory) scientists and engineers who work there on a roster system. It is also used by workers building the Extremely Large Telescope 23 km away. It has been called a "boarding house on Mars", because the desert surroundings are Mars-like, and an "Oasis for astronomers". It is not a commercial hotel, and the public cannot book rooms. The architect was the Chilean-born Hernán Marchant, a current Professor and Associate Dean at North Carolina State University, the architecture firm was Auer+Weber+Assoziierte of Germany and constructor was Vial y Vives Ltda. of Chile. It won the Cityscape Architectural Review Awards in 2005. In 2004 it won the new and overall LEAF Awards. Operated by the European Southern Observatory (ESO), an organization based in Munich, the VLT (Very Large Telescope) is reportedly the most powerful telescope based on Earth.