Las Vegas is a city built upon transplanted identities. Venice. Paris. New York. Luxor. They are all there, albeit in the form of warped, miniaturized/charicaturized versions of themselves. Las Vegas has made billions using this architectural/commercial approach and for good reason. After all, as long as people must pay $1,250 to see the real Venice, [...]
What does CityCenter have to say about Ground Zero? In an interview with Bloomberg architecture critic James O. Russell, James Murren noted how his approach to developing CityCenter was influenced by the design competition that preceded the quagmire at Ground Zero. But the intrepid CEO of MGM Mirage, co-owner of CityCenter with Dubai World, could have [...]
Some months ago, I wrote about a Midwestern city’s struggle to restore and use its Art Deco movie theater. Despite the best efforts of local preservationists however, nothing ever happened and matters deteriorated so much that the downtown landmark is now a strip club.
Well, it turns out, much to my surprise, that such businesses are [...]
Architects, landscape architects, et al, are not immune to economic downturns. Indeed, these professionals are, like their brethren in the construction trades, among the most susceptible to layoffs, unemployment, and months of uncertainty. Unfortunately for these designers however, elected officials generally plowed stimulus dollars toward projects that would primarily benefit the trades (i.e., “Shovel Ready [...]
Stumbling upon this beer (Busch, thank you) bottle house sure adds a bit of perspective to ongoing efforts at sustainable and adaptive-reuse design. It was built in 1905 by a fellow named Tom Kelly in Ryolite, Nevada (for which a mining boom went bust and all life left in 1920). Faced with the area’s scarcity [...]