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
Giants 400 | Aug 22, 2022
Top 200 Contractors for 2022
Turner Construction, STO Building Group, Whiting-Turner, and DPR Construction top the ranking of the nation's largest general contractors, CM at risk firms, and design-builders for nonresidential buildings and multifamily buildings work, as reported in Building Design+Construction's 2022 Giants 400 Report.
Giants 400 | Aug 22, 2022
Top 45 Engineering Architecture Firms for 2022
Jacobs, AECOM, WSP, and Burns & McDonnell top the rankings of the nation's largest engineering architecture (EA) firms for nonresidential buildings and multifamily buildings work, as reported in Building Design+Construction's 2022 Giants 400 Report.
Giants 400 | Aug 22, 2022
Top 80 Engineering Firms for 2022
Kimley-Horn, Tetra Tech, Langan, and NV5 head the rankings of the nation's largest engineering firms for nonresidential buildings and multifamily buildings work, as reported in Building Design+Construction's 2022 Giants 400 Report.
Giants 400 | Aug 21, 2022
Top 110 Architecture/Engineering Firms for 2022
Stantec, HDR, HOK, and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill top the rankings of the nation's largest architecture engineering (AE) firms for nonresidential and multifamily buildings work, as reported in Building Design+Construction's 2022 Giants 400 Report.
Giants 400 | Aug 20, 2022
Top 180 Architecture Firms for 2022
Gensler, Perkins and Will, HKS, and Perkins Eastman top the rankings of the nation's largest architecture firms for nonresidential and multifamily buildings work, as reported in Building Design+Construction's 2022 Giants 400 Report.
Giants 400 | Aug 19, 2022
2022 Giants 400 Report: Tracking the nation's largest architecture, engineering, and construction firms
Now 46 years running, Building Design+Construction's 2022 Giants 400 Report rankings the largest architecture, engineering, and construction firms in the U.S. This year a record 519 AEC firms participated in BD+C's Giants 400 report. The final report includes more than 130 rankings across 25 building sectors and specialty categories.
Hotel Facilities | Aug 12, 2022
Denver builds the nation’s first carbon-positive hotel
Touted as the nation’s first carbon-positive hotel, Populus recently broke ground in downtown Denver.
Hotel Facilities | Jul 28, 2022
As travel returns, U.S. hotel construction pipeline growth follows
According to the recently released United States Construction Pipeline Trend Report from Lodging Econometrics (LE), the total U.S. construction pipeline stands at 5,220 projects/621,268 rooms at the close of 2022’s second quarter, up 9% Year-Over-Year (YOY) by projects and 4% YOY by rooms.
Hotel Facilities | May 31, 2022
Checking out: Tips for converting hotels to housing
Many building owners are considering repositioning their hotels into another property type, such as senior living communities and rental apartments. Here's advice for getting started.
Sponsored | Multifamily Housing | May 8, 2022
Choosing the right paver system for rooftop amenity spaces
This AIA course by Hoffmann Architects offers best practices for choosing the right paver system for rooftop amenity spaces in multifamily buildings.
