The Architecture Issue

A panel of local architects lists area gems

BY TONY ILLIA

Las Vegas has an eclectic architectural history. The city originally germinated along the downtown railroad tracks with a series of unmemorable buildings. During the 1930s, legalized gambling and quickie divorces brought new life into Las Vegas, transforming the city into a tourist destination. It also gave birth to dude ranches, or short-term residences, along the intestate that would prove the forerunner of the modern Strip resort.

As a result, Las Vegas was born from a roadside culture defined by the hotel-casinos flanking its highway. That image may have matured, but it still shapes the city's character today.

Las Vegas' iconic identity stems from the Strip's hulking hotel towers and elaborate neon signs. But Las Vegas has a mercurial nature, constantly adapting and reinventing itself as the public climate changes. The city's sociological responsiveness is a unique quality that Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour discuss in Learning From Las Vegas, a landmark book that has since become a standard architecture text.

Strip resorts have morphed from bungalows into high rises, while the tone has gone from family (MGM) and themed (Paris) to luxurious (Bellagio) and chic (Hard Rock). Following a growing national trend, today's casinos, restaurants and night clubs now use design as its own attraction.

Celebrity architects are often employed to create an atmospheric setting to immerse patrons inside of its world for a total entertainment experience. A fashionable setting can also draw visitors and prolong their stay, creating an ideal environment for businesses. Several local examples exist, including Dale Chihuly's "Fiori di Como" at the Bellagio, Adam Tihany's Aureole restaurant at Mandalay Bay, Thom Mayne's Tsunami Asian Grill at The Venetian, Michael Czysz's Whiskey Bar at Green Valley Ranch Station, and Tony Chi's Wolfgang Puck Bar & Grill at MGM Grand, among others.

But as the city has evolved, its sense of self has seemingly disappeared. Next year, Las Vegas will celebrate its 100-year birthday. It's still a young city. But the buildings that might give it a sense of context and history have vanished, falling prey to newer more profitable projects, such is the fate of economic Darwinism.

The Tam O'Shanter Motel was recently razed and now the La Concha, El Morocco and Algiers hotels await a similar end. However, the 71-year-old, neoclassical U.S. Post Office downtown, now being considered for re-use as a history museum, may still survive the wrecking ball.

The city lacks the referential structures that might otherwise give it a design idiom, embodying an aggregate nature. As such, architects designing in Las Vegas must formulate their own framework, which can be a daunting challenge. Despite this, several projects have succeeded including Mehrdad Yazdani's Lloyd D. George Federal Courthouse, Tate Snyder Kimsey's D-Gate Terminal at McCarran International Airport, Rob Wellington Quigley's Campaige Place, and Antoine Predock's Las Vegas Library and Lied Discovery Children's Museum.

With 6,000 new residents monthly, Las Vegas is currently a hotbed of construction activity. Yet many projects are simple stucco boxes meant for a quick investment return with little thought toward design, which is unfortunate. Buildings are the blocks that form a society. They give shape to its surroundings while embodying its cultural values. A well conceived building can give people a sense of ownership and belonging, uniting them under a common umbrella of civic pride. It can refashion a community's self-identity, empowering it to forge its own destiny.

Local leaders and developers are increasingly realizing the importance of good design. A number of exciting new projects have since surfaced, prompting CityLife to put together a panel of local architects to select some of their favorites. After much discussion and debate, J. Windom Kimsey, principal of Tate Snyder Kimsey Architects; Dr. Michael Kroelinger, director of UNLV's School of Architecture; Lance Kirk, associate architect with Lucchesi, Galati Architects; and Eric Strain, principal of assemblageSTUDIO, came to agreement on the following projects, all completed within the last few years. These buildings are helping to form a new architectural legacy with innovative designs that are injecting new vitality into our local landscape.

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The stylishly chic 55 Degrees Wine + Design is a new 2,175-square-foot retail store inside Mandalay Place that derives its name from wine's ideal serving temperature. Designed by Adrian Jones of Jones & Greenwold and James Gundy of Mandalay Development, who have since formed the firm 1027 Design Management together, it's an unabashedly postmodern take on a wine store inspired by advances in building materials.

Constructed from steel and zebrawood, glass and resin, the space has a sleek futuristic feel. The wood's distinctive long grain pattern gives the room a sense of movement, while its linearity contrasts the silver-leaf circular wall pattern. The finishes are clean and stark, reflecting a minimalist sensibility, but the zebrawood gives it vitality and warmth for balance. The wood symbolically represents a wine barrel, making a classical connection to traditional vineyards.

The store is detailed enough for a discerning aficionado yet still open and accessible enough for a casual passerby. Opened in January 2004, 55 Degrees is located at the second-level of the Mandalay Place bridge, overlooking the escalator lobby entrance. Its placement enables the store to forge an exterior presence within the 100,000-square-foot Mandalay Place.

A façade consisting of zebrawood, mirror and glass with a reflective 55° logo announces the store's arrival. It serves as identity branding as well as an integral part of the design. (The same logo is stamped into the resin floor.)

The L-shaped space houses 1,700 selections of wine that run the gamut from a $10 Spanish red to $4,250 for a 1961 Chateau Latour Bordeaux. Its featured wines are housed inside of a sweeping white fiberglass wall where bottles are lined horizontally inside of individual niches. The recessed displays give the store a sense of drama as though peering into an art exhibit. And by incorporating the bottle into its design, form and function merge for a fun and engaging visual that invites closer inspection.

Flat screen PC tablets enable customers to access the store's inventory, creating an interactive experience. The glazed entry consists of wine accessories, including European handmade glassware and maple storage racks from Australia. That space unfolds into a 15-seat tasting bar that has wine bottle corks embedded in an opaque resin countertop.

The neon lit bar has Wasabi green suede stools that overlook the mall's atrium entrance. The remaining space features polished acrylic wine racks lit by neon with mirrored walls for a sense of depth and dimension.

The store's sexy sinuous shape comes from the wine bottles it houses. Suggesting fluidity, the bottles act as visual jewelry that dazzle, delight and adorn. Embracing cutting-edge technology, 55 Degrees creates an upscale hip space that is a lyrical tribute to the machine age. Its shiny attractiveness evokes curiosity and playfulness, exploration and fun, making 55 Degrees an ideal way to spend an afternoon.

3950 Las Vegas Boulevard South

www.55degreeslasvegas.com

Designer: Adrian Jones, Jones & Greenwold, Las Vegas; and James Gundy, Mandalay Development,

Las Vegas

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The Guggenheim Hermitage Museum at the Venetian Resort hotel-casino is a simple but sumptuous treat. It marks a unique joint-venture between two legendary cultural institutions: the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City and the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia.

The coupling may seem odd at first. The Guggenheim is more known for its modernist paintings while the Hermitage is world famous for its Old Masters. Yet the marriage works, with each seemingly balancing out what the other lacks.

Opened in October 2001, the Guggenheim Hermitage is housed in a compact 7,660-square-foot space, nicknamed the "jewel-box," that flanks the Venetian's porte-cochere entrance. Designed by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, the museum fits snugly into its lavish surroundings but still manages to establish its own stripped-down industrial identity, providing a stark contrast to the hotel's baroque lobby.

Constructed from Cor-Ten steel, both inside and out, the metal has been chemically treated to give the walls a rich weathered feel like well-worn leather. The inspiration comes from the velvet-fabric covered walls at the real Hermitage galleries in St. Petersburg.

Instead of flash, the museum design provides a sensible solution to scale and context, creating "a moment of authenticity," says Koolhaas. A powerful magnet system is used to hang artwork directly onto the walls. Narrow strips of glass above and below the façade walls make it appear to float, gently separating the gallery from the hotel-casino.

There are no wasted gestures here. The Venetian had three existing structural columns that ran through the gallery space. Koolhaas transformed them into pivots for seven-foot-thick operable walls that rotate 90 degrees. This enables curators to open the gallery into a single loft-like space or partition it off into smaller rooms, giving the museum spatial flexibility. Hardwood maple floors and angled lighting imbue the gallery with a surprisingly warm and intimate feel, shut off from the cacophony of the neighboring casino.

Eventually the illusion ends as visitors are led into the inevitable gift shop, selling everything from museum catalogs and posters to T-shirts and handbags. The 2,000-square-foot white-washed space is a visual sorbet, cleansing the palette before final departure. It acts as a transition area allowing patrons to adjust from the Cor-Ten gallery before re-entering the neo-Italian setting of the casino.

With the Guggenheim Hermitage, Koolhaas provides an earnest design that is both pragmatic and artful. A tongue-and-cheek response would have been easy. Building a high-end museum inside a Vegas resort, invites such derision. Koolhaas, to his credit, takes the task seriously and gives us straightforward architecture that is lean and muscular as well as practical and distinctive.

The Venetian Resort Casino

3355 Las Vegas Boulevard South

www.guggenheimlasvegas.org

Designer: Rem Koolhaas, Office for Metropolitan Architecture, Rotterdam, Netherlands; with TSA of Nevada, LLP, Las Vegas

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The Lied Library became a campus icon at UNLV after its January 2001 opening. The five-story, 301,000-square-foot building is an ambitious architectural achievement that pays homage to its surroundings while redefining them.

Its neighbors are constructed primarily from split-face block and glass. The library incorporates those materials, giving it context, while still establishing its own identity. By using zinc-metal cladding and curvilinear forms, it acts as an expression of its generation.

The library's contemporary aesthetic draws upon an industrial, technological-driven age. Designed by Welles Pugsley Architects and Leo A. Daly, it has sleek sinuous lines and a billowing shape that imbue it with a dynamic sense of movement.

The library could be seen as a deconstructionist sailing vessel where the block base serves as the galley with porthole-shaped window openings. A rounded north façade acts as the stern with sunscreens as rudders while flying arches atop the building resemble sails drawing in wind.

Despite its allegory, the library serves a vital role in campus life as a central gathering point for student learning and interaction. Although a cantilevered canopy and glazed entry lend the library a dramatic sense of arrival, past the threshold lays a breathtaking 110-foot-tall day-lit atrium. The massive space acts as a program organizer, combining and classifying the library's various functions. It's also a pedestrian mall that serves as the library's backbone, its lifeline, like the hull of a ship.

With double the capacity of the old James Dickinson Library, the new venue houses 600,000 bound volumes, 3,000 network connections, and seating for 2,500 people. It additionally boasts an Automated Storage and Retrieval System, enabling storage of another 1.2 million volumes.

Other library features include computer labs, special collections and media rooms. The reading areas range from booths and tables to conference rooms and lounges allowing for a variety of study patterns and practices. The interior is flooded with natural lighting, which reports show enhances productivity and learning.

The building's shapely contours allow sunlight to filter in from several angles, illuminating the interior. Metal sunscreens diffuse direct light while lending a sculptural quality to the building's exterior. A plaza-level café/study area spills into an open-air planted courtyard for relaxing and intermingling with benches under an arcade.

Ultimately, the Lied Library is an exhilarating design that injects new purpose and excitement into the university landscape. The building's thoughtful juxtaposition of materials gives it textural variety while its geometric vocabulary delights and dazzles. The Lied Library quickly carved out its space at a growing, crowded campus, firmly establishing itself as the landmark for others to follow.

4505 S. Maryland Parkway

www.library.unlv.edu

Designer: Welles Pugsley Architects LLP, Las Vegas; and Leo A. Daly, Omaha, Neb.

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THEhotel at Mandalay Bay has a sumptuously conceived lobby that makes a uniquely grand statement. It's formal yet relaxed, elegant but comfortable.

The 60,000-square-foot space by Dougall Design Associates is a sharp departure from Mandalay's casino and valet garage, the two entry points for THEhotel. Patrons are transported into a beautifully proportioned space dressed in a refined fashion that is both modern and timeless. The lobby has rich finishes such as veined marble and subtle leather in a restrained palette of black, brown and cream.

"We didn't want to be another replication of what everyone else was doing," says Terry Dougall, president of Dougall Design Associates. "This is a contemporary new hip hotel. It gave us an opportunity to show Las Vegas that we could do something different."

Opened in January 2004, the lobby houses nine check-in desks beneath a 30-foot Arturo Herrera mural, plus a bell desk and a business center. There is also a sundries store, a 24-hour casual restaurant and a coffee bar. A richly textured bar/lounge with billiards is neatly tucked away near the check-in.

The lobby's distinctive décor makes for a dramatic setting that has an art deco feel. There are discrete gathering points interspersed throughout, furnished with plush oversized chairs and tasteful tables. But it's the innovate use of diffuse lighting that gives the lobby its spectacular contrasts.

From the valet entrance, guests pass through a low white-washed area that opens into a 25-foot-tall day-lit foyer. A cross-grid of overhead trusses softens direct sunlight while setting the room aglow. The space acts as a visual and sonic buffer, allowing patrons to adjust from the concrete kinetic garage before proceeding to the smoother, more graceful lobby.

A set of Richard Serra etchings and intaglios flank the walls, foreshadowing the imagery to come. The artist's industrial minimalism, known for its simple, raw power and controlled geometry, informs much of Dougall's design aesthetic. However, indirect and oblique light from varied angles give the lobby its warmth and character.

It connects to Mandalay Bay via a grand promenade leading into the casino, which exits between the Mandalay Bay Theatre and the race and sports book. Unlike the valet entry, the transition area before the casino is a dark, negative space with black-and-white photographs from French photographer Valerie Berlin. It sets an altogether different tone and mood, signaling the change to come.

Finally, the lobby at THEhotel possesses an ageless sensibility that defies fads and trends, like a Cole Porter song or a Bogey-Bacall movie. It's a striking space that grabs you, making you feel awed, exultant and a little breathless all at once. It's a rare and unexpected delight to find a lobby that can both surprise and enchant with a sophisticated smart design that resonates with classic style and enduring taste.

3950 Las Vegas Boulevard South

www.thehotelatmandalaybay.com

Designer: Dougall Design Associates Inc., Pasadena; with Mandalay Development,

Las Vegas

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The Las Vegas Springs Preserve is a brave new piece of public planning. Although it won't open until May 2006, the 180-acre project embodies some progressive urban ideas previously unseen in the valley.

It aims to re-envision our desert aesthetic through an array of low-water, energy-efficient buildings and gardens. The undertaking couldn't be timelier. Southern Nevada's current drought has resulted in the removal of a football field worth of grass every day from front lawns, golf courses and playgrounds in order to save on outdoor watering.

Located on Valley View Boulevard between U.S. 95 and Alta Drive, the springs once provided water for all of Las Vegas, which means "meadows" in Spanish. After the springs dried up in 1962, the area fell into disrepair and faced being paved over as a freeway.

Archeological discoveries ultimately rescued the site, and led to its enlistment on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. Valley leaders have since resolved to restore its cultural integrity and natural resources. A multi-faceted, ambitious effort is now underway to transform the neglected area into a Central Park for Las Vegas.

The project emphasizes sustainability, using conscientious designs that conserve power, minimize water use and improve environmental quality. And while sustainability is often discussed, it's rarely implemented. The Springs Preserve will be the real deal, seeking the highest possible certification from the U.S. Green Buildings Council.

Parts of it are already shaping up. The freeway retaining wall, for example, is filled with straw to dampen noise and deflect heat. The straw also creates a microclimate for fragile species of plants and animals. (The Preserve is home to the rare Las Vegas bearpoppy plus 104 species of birds, including the red-tailed hawk and the prairie falcon.)

Other project features include a 30-acre "cienega" or wetlands area, formed from recycled water, and a 46,000-square-foot Desert Living Center built with earth-rammed walls for improved heating and cooling.

The center, designed by Lucchesi, Galati Architects, has an angled roof that collects rainwater for irrigation and flushing toilets. It also uses shredded jeans as insulation and railroad ties as roof trusses. Thirty-foot-tall cooling towers ventilate the center while solar panels generate electricity.

Additional preserve components consist of a 50,000-square-foot Visitors Center by Tate Snyder Kimsey Architects, built with weathered steel siding and lime-based plaster, plus a horticultural maintenance facility and demonstration gardens with 20,000 species of drought-tolerant plant life.

In addition, the Nevada State Museum and Historical Society is relocating from Lorenzi Park to the preserve, and constructing a new 75,000-square-foot building by the Paul Steelman Design Group. A system of resin trails will connect the various features for pedestrian access.

The preserve's creative construction methods offer a palpable alternative for desert living. It provides innovative examples to difficult conservation questions. The Preserve bridges both the past and present while giving us an inspired vision for the future. In that sense, it serves a broader civic role that leads by example, which is something rare in today's world.

1001 Valley View Boulevard

www.springspreserve.org

Designers: Las Vegas Valley Water District with The Portico Group, Seattle; Lucchesi, Galati Architects, Las Vegas; PBS&J Inc., Henderson; Poggemeyer Design Group Inc., Las Vegas; Native Resources Nevada, Las Vegas; Tate Snyder Kimsey Architects, Henderson; C+B Nevada Inc., Las Vegas; Paul Steelman Design Group, Las Vegas

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The Mesquite Fine Arts Center has an organic design that embodies the rich agricultural history of the Virgin River Valley. During the early 1900s, seven area farms provided most of Southern Utah with dairy products. And in 1906 at the World's Fair in San Francisco, Mesquite won first place for its seedless grapes and pomegranates. As such, the center has a naturalistic feel that connects with its terrain in a thoughtful understated way.

Opened in June 2003, the 4,000-square-foot center is located along Mesquite's main drag, situated next the Virgin Valley Heritage Museum. The new building is sensitive toward its historic neighbor, a small rock structure erected in 1942 under the National Youth Administration Program. It pays homage to the existing building while subtly asserting its own individuality.

Designed by Eric Strain of assemblageSTUDIO, the center consists of two buildings connected by a short glass enclosed breezeway. The large gallery is a single-level double-height concrete box. Colored in light tan with a pinkish tinge, it has a glazed south façade plus two floor-level corner windows. This enables natural light to stream into the gallery's interior from diverse angles, giving it an open airy sensation.

Visitors experience an instant link to the outside, distorting the line between indoors and out, a quality reminiscent of Frank Lloyd Wright's best work. The other building is clad in weathered metal paneling, rusted to a velvety orange hue. It houses a smaller artificially lit gallery, plus a gift shop, kitchen and office. The gallery interiors have an earth-stained concrete floor with clean white-washed walls, while the non-art areas have a lime green backdrop. The contrasting colors signal a division between functions, a change from one space to the next.

There is no false architectural ornamentation. Everything at the center serves a function. The worn steel paneling is an allusion to the farm equipment that played a major role in the area's economic past. At the same time, it lends a gritty agedness to the building as though it had been there all along. Also, the metal's rough texture is juxtaposed against the smooth concrete, giving the center visual variety. An opaque glass screen on the eastern side serves as its main entry, forming a garden promenade.

The center additionally has a courtyard with an angled sheet metal canopy supported by chevron braces for shade and shelter. It's complemented by desert xeriscaping with smooth river rock and Regal Mist grass indigenous to the valley. The space forms a direct relation to the Heritage Museum, uniting the two venues.

However, the courtyard's most striking feature is a 40-foot-tall silo that is a towering icon symbolically representing the valley's farming roots. It conceptually marries the Arts Center to the Heritage Museum. Along Mesquite Boulevard, that union is further consummated with antique farm equipment and a low rock wall that mimics the museum's construction. This helps to form a contiguous line between the two cultural centers, with one seemingly complementing the other.

The Mesquite Arts Center is a daring departure for an area steeped in convention. The building draws its design inspiration from the native landscape to forge a simple but rugged elegance that is both familiar and new.

15 E. Mesquite Boulevard

Mesquite, Nevada

www.mesquitefineartscenter.com

Designer: Eric Strain, assemblageSTUDIO,

Las Vegas

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The Lynn Bennett Early Childhood Center is a thoughtful, well-plotted daycare complex located on the UNLV campus. Designed by Eric Strain of assemblageSTUDIO, the center consists of six buildings forming a quiet insular learning environment that are both playful and exuberant.

The structures are arranged to form an interior courtyard, effectively creating a campus within a campus. Colored in native desert hues, the buildings are constructed from simple materials: stucco and block, glass and metal. Although they reflect the existing building materials on campus, they are combined in a refreshingly imaginative manner that shows a modern sensibility.

By mingling the materials, alternating from rough to smooth and back again, it gives the center a textural variety that proves a visual delight. There are 21,000 square feet of buildings, grouped together according to age and grade.

Opened in January 2004, the center teaches children from six weeks up to five years old. A different dynamic and coloring is used with each building, making it unique.

The idea was intended to give students a sense of ownership and belonging within their classroom. Also it enables them to experience both an academic and physical advancement from building to building.

The center's composition creates a landscaped mall with turf and desert plants in varied elevations. Amenities consist of an amphitheater, splash fountains and 30,000 square feet of play spaces, each geared toward the age group it serves.

There are plumb, orange and apple trees as well as vegetables that children can plant and harvest for an experiential learning process. The center's largest building is a two-story, 4,000-square-foot block and stucco structure for infants and administration.

The lower portion is constructed from spilt-face masonry that alternately recesses and protrudes to break-up the building surface while symbolically representing a child's learning blocks.

The upper level is a glass-enclosed administration area with clear views overlooking the courtyard. The remaining low-level structures make extensive use of floor-to-ceiling glazing facing the mall area with large roll-up doors that extend the learning environment outdoors. It also lets daylight spill into the classrooms, giving them an open airy feeling while saving money on artificial lighting and climate control.

"Too many times, the outdoors doesn't play into the classroom environment," says Eric Strain, the building's designer. "Studies have shown that access to natural light can result in 25 percent higher test scores."

The buildings have clean crisp lines that give it an easy appeal. Extensive detailing incorporates children safety features such as slip-resistant flooring, shock-proof electrical outlets and shatter-proof glass. As home for the university's preschool, the center fosters learning, growth and development not only through its curriculum, but through its built environment. It achieves a grounded naturalistic atmosphere that both nurtures and challenges its students with a distinctive architectural setting that is a rare pleasure among modern educational facilities.

4505 S. Maryland Parkway

www.unlv.edu/centers/preschool/lbecec.htm

Designer: Eric Strain, assemblageSTUDIO, Las Vegas