The world’s first guitar-shaped hotel, with a price tag estimated at $1.5 billion, opened in Hollywood, Fla., late last month.
The 450-ft-tall 34-story Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, sitting on 34 acres, includes 638 music-themed guest rooms and suites, a 12,000-sf rooftop bar, 14 on-site restaurants, more than 20 shops, a lagoon called Bora Bora, and a 6,556-seat, 225,000-sf multipurpose theater called Hard Rock Live, designed by the Canadian firm Scéno Plus, that alone cost an estimated $125 million. (A concert by the rock group Maroon 5 opened this venue on October 25.)
Klai Juba Wald Architecture & Interiors designed the hotel, Giovanetti Shulman Associates and Arup were engineers on this project, and Suffolk Construction the GC. The hotel/casino is owned through Hard Rock International by the Seminole Tribe of Florida.
The building’s façade is outfitted with 2.3 million LEDs, video mapping and lasers, capable of creating a multitude of visual effects and presentations. Boston-based custom fabricator Design Communications LTD (DCL) managed, directed, engineered, and installed the LEDs and power systems provided by SACO, with generative and sound-reactive content created by Float4 using Realmotion 4 Karat Gold Series servers. SmartMonkeys provided an integrated scheduling and automation control platform called ISAAC.
Float4 created generative and sound-reactive content for the hotel's exterior lighting effects using Realmotion servers.
The facade has five core elements that can each be used for specific effects:
•The Front & Back are the main sections on which dynamic content can be video mapped.
•The Outline delineates the edges of the guitar shape, and content plays with this aspect by hiding and revealing the guitar’s contours.
•The Sides enhance the illusion of depth for visual effects
•The Strings, which utilize lasers instead of LEDs, are used to show vertical motion and effects such as fountains, chord strums and string plucks.
•The Spandrel Glass section is ideal for expanding content from the face and body to create the illusion of another level of content.
Videos of the hotel can be viewed here and here.
James Allen, chairman of Hard Rock International, expects the new hotel/casino to attract between 15,000 and 20,000 visitors a day, and up to 45,000 on Saturdays. The project created 2,400 construction jobs, and the facility will employ around 4,000 people.
Related Stories
| May 25, 2011
Hotel offers water beds on a grand scale
A semi-submerged resort hotel is the newest project from Giancarlo Zema, a Rome-based architect known for his organic maritime designs. The hotel spans one kilometer and has both land and sea portions.
| May 20, 2011
Hotels taking bath out of the bathroom
Bathtubs are disappearing from many hotels across the country as chains use the freed-up space to install ever more luxurious showers, according to a recent USAToday report. Of course, we reported on this move--and 6 other hospitality trends--back in 2006 in our special report "The Inn Things: Seven Radical New Trends in Hotel Design."
| May 18, 2011
Design diversity celebrated at Orange County club
The Orange County, Calif., firm NKDDI designed the 22,000-sf Luna Lounge & Nightclub in Pomona, Calif., to be a high-end multipurpose event space that can transition from restaurant to lounge to nightclub to music venue.
| May 10, 2011
Dinner is now served…atop the Lincoln Memorial?
Take a look at the temporary restaurant sitting atop Brussels’ historic Arc de Triomphe-Triomfboog. The Cube, by Electrolux, offers 18 diners a spectacular view of the Parc du Cinquantenair, and is one of two structures traveling across Europe, making stops at famous landmarks in Belgium, Italy, Switzerland, Sweden, and Russia. What do you think about one of these 60-tonne structures being placed on a U.S. memorial?
| Apr 13, 2011
Southern Illinois park pavilion earns LEED Platinum
Erin’s Pavilion, a welcome and visitors center at the 80-acre Edwin Watts Southwind Park in Springfield, Ill., earned LEED Platinum. The new 16,000-sf facility, a joint project between local firm Walton and Associates Architects and the sustainability consulting firm Vertegy, based in St. Louis, serves as a community center and special needs education center, and is named for Erin Elzea, who struggled with disabilities during her life.
| Mar 17, 2011
Hospitality industry turns to HTS Texas for ‘do not disturb’ air conditioned comfort
Large resort hotels and hospitality properties throughout the Southwest have been working with local contractors, engineers and HTS Texas for the latest innovations in quiet heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC) equipment. The company has completed 12+ projects throughout Texas and the Southwestern U.S. over the past 18 to 24 months, and is currently working on six more hotel projects throughout the region.
| Mar 11, 2011
Holiday Inn reworked for Downtown Disney Resort
The Orlando, Fla., office of VOA Associates completed a comprehensive interior and exterior renovation of the 14-story Holiday Inn in the Downtown Disney Resort in Lake Buena Vista, Fla. The $25 million project involved rehabbing the hotel’s 332 guest rooms, atrium, swimming pool, restaurant, fitness center, and administrative spaces.
