 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The $9.2 billion CityCenter complex in Las Vegas is the nation’s largest privately funded development. Key: A. Mandarin Oriental (Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates); B. Veer (Murphy/Jahn Architects); C. Crystals (Studio Daniel Libeskind); D. The Harmon (Foster + Partners); E. People mover (Gensler); F. Vdara (Rafael Viñoly Architects); G. Aria (Pelli Clarke Pelli); H. Convention Center (Pelli Clarke Pelli); I. Cirque du Soleil theater (Pelli Clarke Pelli). | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
It's early June, in Las Vegas, which means it's very hot, and I am coming to the end of a hardhat tour of the $9.2 billion CityCenter development, a tour that began in the air-conditioned comfort of the project's immense sales center just off the famed Las Vegas Strip and ended on a rooftop overlooking the largest privately funded development in the U.S. and one of the largest construction projects in the world. Only from such a height can you take in the enormity of this 18.6 million-sf mixed-use project. The statistics are staggering: a massive joint venture
It goes without saying that looking at the scale model of the project in the sales office just doesn't do justice to CityCenter. Thus I find myself atop the Bellagio Hotel parking garage, chatting with several architects from the Las Vegas office of San Francisco-based Gensler, the project's master architect. The newly constructed garage borders CityCenter and offers a bird's-eye view into the heart of the project, and it is from this vantage point that I begin to appreciate just how different CityCenter is from anything ever built in Las Vegas.
Apparently my response to the project is not unique. “People don't really understand it or feel it until they walk through it,” says Sven Van Assche, VP of MGM Design Group. “It's experiential, the progression of taking yourself through the project, going from neighborhood to neighborhood, from experience to experience,” he says. “We are doing something so different from what we've done before, something outside our own box.” Van Assche acknowledges how a project of this scale could easily become intimidating and overwhelming, emotions at odds with MGM Mirage's core business of providing hospitality. He worked with New York-based Ehrenkrantz Eckstut and Kuhn Architects to create a master plan that broke down the project's scale into three neighborhoods with the unpoetic titles Blocks A, B, and C. The goal, according to Van Assche: “to make being in CityCenter a more inviting, comfortable, and welcoming experience for the customer.” The concept of neighborhood reinforces CityCenter's urban aspirations. Van Assche, sounding very much like a disciple of Jane Jacobs, says that a walk around a city like New York produces multiple experiences that come from encountering diverse building types—stores, restaurants, hotels, housing, entertainment venues—with surprises around every corner. “What makes great cities so much fun is their diversity and energy,” says Van Assche. “We're trying to create that energy.” Creating a real-city vibe through a diverse product mix led Van Assche to seek out world-class architects who hadn't previously worked in Las Vegas, each of whom could all add something new and exciting to the mix. Van Assche says he sought designers with global reputations and the ability to work as a cohesive team. “It was about finding the most creative architects who could fit the vision we were trying to achieve,” he says. “They've been successful in doing enormously creative work around the world, and they've done so in an architectural vernacular we were interested in ourselves,” says Van Assche. Before anyone signed on, however, Van Assche made sure they checked their egos at the airport. “They had to be interested in being part of a project where it wasn't all about them,” he says. “They needed to understand how intimately we were going to integrate these buildings with one another, and that they would have to collaborate with people who are normally their competitors.” The bottom line: “The synergy had to be positive.” A two-month-long design review helped sort out the assignments: Pelli Clark Pelli was awarded the Aria hotel, casino, convention center, and Cirque du Soleil theatre; Rafael Viñoly Architects, the Vdara condo hotel; Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, the Mandarin Oriental; Murphy/Jahn, the Veer condominium towers; Foster + Partners, The Harmon hotel and residential tower; and Studio Daniel Libeskind, Crystals retail complex. Each firm was granted significant autonomy over their respective projects as long as they worked within the contemporary aesthetic that MGM Mirage wanted. “The architects all created buildings that are very unique unto themselves, but they did it all using the same ingredients,” says Van Assche. |
Related Stories
| Nov 29, 2010
Data Centers: Keeping Energy, Security in Check
Power consumption for data centers doubled from 2000 and 2006, and it is anticipated to double again by 2011, making these mission-critical facilities the nation’s largest commercial user of electric power. Major technology companies, notably Hewlett-Packard, Cisco Systems, and International Business Machines, are investing heavily in new data centers. HP, which acquired technology services provider EDS in 2008, announced in June that it would be closing many of its older data centers and would be building new, more highly optimized centers around the world.
| Nov 29, 2010
Renovating for Sustainability
Motivated by the prospect of increased property values, reduced utility bills, and an interest in jumping on the sustainability bandwagon, a noted upturn in green building upgrades is helping designers and real estate developers stay busy while waiting for the economy to recover. In fact, many of the larger property management outfits have set up teams to undertake projects seeking LEED for Existing Buildings: Operations & Maintenance (LEED-EBOM, also referred to as LEED-EB), a certification by the U.S. Green Building Council.
| Nov 23, 2010
The George W. Bush Presidential Center, which will house the former president’s library
The George W. Bush Presidential Center, which will house the former president’s library and museum, plus the Bush Institute, is aiming for LEED Platinum. The 226,565-sf center, located at Southern Methodist University, in Dallas, was designed by architect Robert A.M. Stern and landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh.
| Nov 16, 2010
Brazil Olympics spurring green construction
Brazil's green building industry will expand in the coming years, spurred by construction of low-impact venues being built for the 2016 Olympics. The International Olympic Committee requires arenas built for the 2016 games in Rio de Janeiro meet international standards for low-carbon emissions and energy efficiency. This has boosted local interest in developing real estate with lower environmental impact than existing buildings. The timing couldn’t be better: the Brazilian government is just beginning its long-term infrastructure expansion program.
| Nov 16, 2010
Green building market grows 50% in two years; Green Outlook 2011 report
The U.S. green building market is up 50% from 2008 to 2010—from $42 billion to $55 billion-$71 billion, according to McGraw-Hill Construction's Green Outlook 2011: Green Trends Driving Growth report. Today, a third of all new nonresidential construction is green; in five years, nonresidential green building activity is expected to triple, representing $120 billion to $145 billion in new construction.
| Nov 16, 2010
Calculating office building performance? Yep, there’s an app for that
123 Zero build is a free tool for calculating the performance of a market-ready carbon-neutral office building design. The app estimates the discounted payback for constructing a zero emissions office building in any U.S. location, including the investment needed for photovoltaics to offset annual carbon emissions, payback calculations, estimated first costs for a highly energy efficient building, photovoltaic costs, discount rates, and user-specified fuel escalation rates.
| Nov 11, 2010
USGBC certifies more than 1 billion square feet of commercial space
This month, the total footprint of commercial projects certified under the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED Green Building Rating System surpassed one billion square feet. Another six billion square feet of projects are registered and currently working toward LEED certification around the world. Since 2000, more than 36,000 commercial projects and 38,000 single-family homes have participated in LEED.
| Nov 9, 2010
Just how green is that college campus?
The College Sustainability Report Card 2011 evaluated colleges and universities in the U.S. and Canada with the 300 largest endowments—plus 22 others that asked to be included in the GreenReportCard.org study—on nine categories, including climate change, energy use, green building, and investment priorities. More than half (56%) earned a B or better, but 6% got a D. Can you guess which is the greenest of these: UC San Diego, Dickinson College, University of Calgary, and Dartmouth? Hint: The Red Devil has turned green.
