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Abu Dhabi announced as second Sphere venue location

2024-10-15T14:01:00-04:00

The second iteration of the popular Sphere venue will be located in Abu Dhabi after officials from the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi (DCT) announced a deal with its New York-based holding company Sphere Entertainment.

The first Sphere location outside of the United States is part of the intended vision of CEO James Dolan for a global network of venues and will require the DCT to pay a franchise initiation fee for the use of proprietary designs and intellectual property. It also aligns with Abu Dhabi's larger 2030 Tourism Strategy, which spurred an investment equal to at least $10 billion.

The DCT Abu Dhabi will also be asked to pay an annual fee to use the Sphere’s creative and artistic content. Populous’ original design for the 20,000-seat Las Vegas Sphere cost a total of $2.3 billion to construct between 2019 and 2023.

This ends some speculation as to where the Sphere would exp...

Populous unveils cliffside Saudi stadium design formed of modular cubes

2024-01-22T11:44:00-05:00

Populous has unveiled plans for a major stadium in Saudi Arabia to be constructed on top of a 650-foot-tall cliff. The Prince Mohammed Bin Salman Stadium seeks to “draw visitors from across the globe and revolutionize the traditional stadium experience with its immersive design and unique technological features,” according to the team.

Image credit: Populous

Located in Qiddiya City, 40 minutes from the capital Riyadh, the venue is designed to host the country’s largest sports, entertainment, and cultural events and is expected to attract 7.6 million annual visits. The stadium will be the world’s first venue with a combined retractable roof, pitch, and LED wall, offering what the team calls “unparalleled versatility” in “allowing the space to transform into different ‘event modes’ in a matter of hours.”

When activated, the LED wall will display live event broadcasts, high-definition films, and laser shows. When not in use, the wall gives way to views of the city from the venue’s cliff...

Populous reveals new esports arena design for Saudi Arabia's Qiddiya megaproject

2023-12-26T18:29:00-05:00

Populous has announced its plans for an esports gaming center in the new Qiddiya City entertainment district of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The proposed Qiddiya City Esports Arena is included under the Saudi Vision 2030 umbrella and serves a considerable market of gaming fans within the country that is anticipated to grow to contribute $13 billion to the country’s GDP annually in the same time period.

Populous will leverage a considerable past experience in esports and gaming, including the NBA 2K League Broadcast Arena, Fortress Melbourne, and the new Esports Stadium in Arlington, Texas. The firm says its final product will be unique to them all both in terms of scale and their users’ experience, creating a “fantasy world” with capacity for more than 5,155 players.

Image courtesy Populous

The program is divided into six translucent volumes, each with its own LED-lit entrance. Once inside, the gaming experience will be focused into a central bowl seating arrangement wrapped by two concours...

Take a look inside the Las Vegas Sphere's interior and lighting designs

2023-12-22T14:05:00-05:00

New York-based design studio ICRAVE has shared a special look inside its interior, wayfinding, and lighting design work on the headline-grabbing new Sphere entertainment venue in Las Vegas.

Besides its 580,000-square-foot fully programmable exterior LED facade and the 160,000-square interior display for 17,500 guests, Sphere features another 300,000 square feet of interior space spread across eight levels.

Cross section rendering of Sphere. Image courtesy Sphere Entertainment

The lighting strategy for its lobby, VIP clubs, food and beverage spaces, and other hospitality suites was designed to mimic the geometry of the venue (now the world’s largest spherical structure) and insists on stage lighting to further communicate its purpose to the world.

Photo: Rich Fury, courtesy Sphere Entertainment

“We needed the surrounding spaces to live up to the promise of what’s inside the bowl and to ensure...

South Korea moves closer to getting its own MSG Sphere

2023-12-16T08:00:00-05:00

South Korean media outlets are reporting on a deal that would bring a new MSG Sphere design to the Seoul region just weeks after its controversial London predecessor was rejected over suspect environmental impact assessments and local opposition.

The new 20,000-capacity venue will feature a 1.2 million LED display, the same numbers as the now-open Las Vegas counterpart. The potential satellite would be included in the city of Hanam’s K-Star World project, a mixed-use district totaling 900,000 square meters and located roughly 12 miles to the east of the capital’s Gangnam neighborhood, according to the Korea Economic Daily.

"If Hanam attracts Asia’s first MSG Sphere, it will be an opportunity for Korea’s entertainment industry to take a quantum leap in attracting huge overseas investment and tourists," Mayor Lee Hyun-Jae told the paper in August.

He was reportedly looki...

The Sunset Strip may get a mini Las Vegas Sphere-ish display

2023-11-09T17:45:00-05:00

A new spherical LED billboard display appears ready to grace Los Angeles’ Sunset Boulevard as planners are preparing to review a developer proposal for "The Sphere on Sunset" entertainment venue in West Hollywood.

Urbanize LA was first to report on the Las Vegas Sphere-like structure before it goes up for review in front of the West Hollywood Planning Commission's Design Review Subcommittee today (November 9).

The project would culminate at 8410 Sunset Boulevard. Its brief calls for the demolition of an existing café at the site, an outdoor video display, and construction of a 49-foot wide sphere and a 2,460-square-foot building to be used partially for podcast production. A new 2,400-square-foot pedestrian plaza and 1,350-square-foot roof terrace/viewing platform will be enacted as well. Los Angeles’ SAEE Studio is listed as the architect.

Image courtesy SAEE Studio

The project hopes to follow in the 516-foot-wide footsteps of the wildly successful Las Vegas Sphere, which has drawn...

Learning from Las Vegas’ new Sphere as it shines a light on the future of entertainment design

2023-10-02T15:24:00-04:00

The buzz that followed the recent debut of Populous' $2.3 billion Sphere in Las Vegas has provided one academic at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas with a valuable teaching opportunity to expose students to cutting-edge concepts integral to the future of high-tech spatial experience, urban development, and entertainment design.

“I’m excited to see some of my own students in the master of architecture program, have played a role in things like commissioning of the Sphere as part of their internships, looking at the building system performance,” Associate Professor of Architecture Glenn NP Nowak told the local affiliate KLAS-TV recently. “We have looked at the integration of digital technology, obviously it’s paramount when looking at that, it’s impossible to ignore and it shows that evolution we’ve seen throughout the Strip.”

Nowak serves as the founding director of the UNLV School o...

Watch Las Vegas’ MSG Sphere light up for Fourth of July debut

2023-07-05T18:11:00-04:00

At 366 feet tall and 516 feet wide, it’s being billed as the world’s largest spherical structure. Its bowl-shaped theater reportedly contains the world’s highest-resolution wraparound LED screen. And its exterior is fitted with 1.2 million hockey puck-sized LEDs that can be programmed to flash dynamic imagery on a massive scale – again, reportedly the world’s largest. It was fully illuminated for the first time Tuesday night to celebrate the Fourth of July.

The venue doesn’t officially debut until late September with the beginning of U2’s special residency. The sphere will blast tunes from its hyper-customizable 164,000-speaker audio system, which somehow can even direct specific languages to certain parts of the audience.

Video courtesy of Sphere/YouTube

Testing of its eye-burning extierior didn’t commence until just last week. In a press statement, Sphere Entertainment SVP Guy Barnett called it “living architecture, and unlike anything that exists anywhere in the world.”

The new world's largest kaleidoscope is a sight to behold

2022-02-03T14:33:00-05:00

The creative landscape of Saudi Arabia got a colorful new addition as STUFISH Entertainment Architects has revealed its design for what the firm says is now the world’s largest kaleidoscope.

The massive 40 x 6 x 3-meter (131 x 19.5 x 10-foot) installation hinges on an intricate series of LED tiles and a combination of seamless and warp-less mirrors that create an expansive, awe-inspiring internal environment. Visitors will be exposed to scenes of the Arabian Peninsula's stunning natural landscape and spotted with digital content that promotes the country’s investment in high-tech development.

Image copyright Stufish courtesy of LEAP

The installation is part of the 2022 LEAP future technologies conference hosted by Saudi Arabia, which concluded today at Riyadh’s Front Expo Centre. STUFISH partner Maciej Woroniecki says it is meant to represent “how a simple and considered design, when supported with a material that can scale as intended, can return an experience that is far larger th...

A Las Vegas theater company knows the value of having an interior architect on board (and they're hiring one right now)

2021-08-07T09:00:00-04:00

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Our industry-leading job board publishes approximately 150 new opportunities every week. Employment offerings from numerous locations and thousands of firms, organizations, creative companies, and institutions offer a mix of career opportunities for architects and design professionals from a variety of backgrounds and experiences.

Beyond traditional employment openings from small, medium, and large firms, Archinect Jobs also showcases a selection of unique job opportunities for architects.

Last week, our editorial team highlighted an exciting job opening to work as a Treehouse Designer. This week, renowned American theater company Spiegelworld is searching for an Interior Architect or Interior Designer for a remote position with their team.

Im...

Matt Rossetti on tennis design

2019-09-05T14:00:00-04:00

Sports journalist Tim Newcomb has penned an intriguing exploration of tennis stadium design, looking at the architecture through the work of Matt Rossetti, an architect and established expert in this typology.

Rossetti started in tennis design in 1990 with his father's architecture firm, Rossetti Architects. Now the president of the firm, Rosetti still seeks to push the envelope in tennis design. "We are trying to redefine the tennis stadium every time," Rossetti expressed in Newcomb's article, acknowledging the tendency architects tend to have to repeatedly reinvent something.

Miami Open Tennis Complex. Rossetti Architects. Photo by Rafael Gamo

Newcomb dives into Rossetti's innovative design of the 2019 Miami Open that was held in the Hard Rock Stadium. Here, Rossetti introduced a temporary pop-up stadium within the existing 65,000-seat football stadium. "I think about what we did for the Miami Open and I think a lot of people are going to look at that as a future trend, where you c...