oneshotexhibition.org blog

While much of the US economy is trying to survive from the downfall of the real estate market, there is one project that is still going and building with less fanfare but has most of the tourist gawking about is the City Center on the Vegas Strip. It is a City Center (aren’t all hotel casinos a city within itself) along Las Vegas Blvd, near E. Harmon Ave. intersection, with its own zip code that cost 11 billion dollars, consisting designs by world re-known architects: Daniel Libeskind, Ceasar Pelli, Helmut Jahn, Rafael Viñoly, Norman Foster and David Rockwell, having it bill as a world-class city development focusing on art and architecture with an emphasis on sustainable design, being develop by MGM Mirage Company at the cost of 11 billion dollars. It shows what kind of diversity in architecture can bring to Las Vegas at a price.

It was an opportunity to hang out with some friends in last month’s March Madness in New York, New York Hotel and Casino to check out the center. During the day, I could overhear crowds of revelers and tourist commenting the look of the center. A couple with a heavy southern accent commented that they didn’t know what to think about the look of the complex, especially at the Daniel Libeskind design, “it didn’t look pretty, but I think it’s ugly.” In some of the theoretical world of architecture, it is a compliment and reveling in it. It’s weird. Las Vegas, in a whole, is a town that is perceived of being of not knowing what to think. With all the kitsch, urban sprawl, traffic, lack of water resource and the fact it is in the middle of the dessert. It seems that people like myself escape to an area made out of nothing for something other than the truth and the reality of a sustainable city.

Back to City Center, late in the evening at 4:00 in the morning, I got the chance to really check the center up close while walking to the Sahara Hotel to get to the hotel room. While there were less people on the strip, I found there were no security at the gate and had the possibility of walking inside the complex with no problem. It seems that there resources are running thin, construction is moving in a snail pace and MGM Mirage are trying to get more financial backing to finish the project, the possibility of selling off some of their casino resorts to avoid bankruptcy.

What the problem is with this lifestyle center is the cost and livability in comparison to the rest of the City of Las Vegas; a unit of one can cost up to 23 million dollars. More people are losing their homes in break neck speed. The role of well known architects has been co-opted in designing over the top designs that become a selling point for the exclusive and not for all classes. While mainstream Las Vegas has become a bastion of the absurbity, we could always come to the originator of gaudiness and kitsch is Liberace.

View of City Center w/ Daniel Lebeskind designed building in the foreground (tilting walls).