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Wynn Resorts in Las Vegas is suing its neighbor Resorts World, which is currently under construction, for copying its design. The 17-page lawsuit includes a trademark infringement and unfair competition lawsuit against the soon-to-be casino and resort. According to Wynn, the similarity in designs... View full entry
Architecture and film have had a longstanding partnership. Many iconic blockbuster hits would not have been the same without the magic of talented set and stage designers. If you're planning your next movie marathon, check out these 7 famous hotel rooms that have dawned the big screen. Thanks to... View full entry
The damage from the housing crisis — a toxic combination of frenzied buying, rampant construction, predatory lending and investment excess — was extensive. Of the 23,000 single-family homes in the 89031 ZIP code, more than 7,500 have had at least one foreclosure since 2006, according to Attom Data Solutions. — NYT
A team including; Matthew Goldstein, Robert Gebeloff, Ross Mantle and Matt Ruby released a deep dive into the community of North Las Vegas. The global financial crisis of 2008 impacted it greatly and though the local housing market has strengthened and it is today one of the fastest-growing cities... View full entry
The Madison Square Garden Company (MSG) confirmed on Friday that it wants to build the Sphere, a glazed orb with up to 18,000 seats and room for 5,000 standing, beside the Olympic Park in east London.
Designs of a similar “sphere” planned for Las Vegas suggest that the vault of the roof will become a giant screen for vast projections, which could evoke the sensation of being underwater or in a forest.
— The Guardian
Rumors about a monumental sphere-shaped music venue proposal for London seem to be gaining substance: The Guardian reports that the New York-based Madison Square Garden Company confirmed its plans to build a glazed orb — designed by Populous — for over 20,000 concert goers near the... View full entry
Now, decades after the original hardcover edition sold out, the MIT Press is publishing a facsimile edition of the original large-format Cooper-designed edition of Learning from Las Vegas, complete with translucent glassine wrap. This edition also features a spirited preface by Denise Scott Brown, looking back on the creation of the book and explaining her and Robert Venturi’s reservations about the original design. — MIT Press
45 years after its first publication, the groundbreaking book, Learning from Las Vegas, is still read, purchased and studied by architecture and urban planning students, thinkers and practitioners around the world. Last year Archinect spoke with Denise Scott Brown about the Learning from Las... View full entry
After a large solar array, Boulder Solar 1, came online on Dec. 12, the city was able to buy enough carbon-free electricity to power its 140 buildings, streetlights and other facilities. [...]
The renewables, plus energy efficiency savings, are estimated to save the city roughly $5 million per year [...]
The Vegas city council, after threatening to leave the grid entirely in 2015, struck a deal with NV Energy that would help the city get to 100% renewable.
— qz.com
Related on Archinect: AECOM halts work on Faraday Future's $1-Billion Nevada factory Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh made a $350 million bet on downtown Las Vegas – five years later, the results are murky Vegas is back...sorta Learning from Las Vegas: a look at the Strip through urban planning lenses View full entry
Faraday Future’s future is looking bleaker.
After the electric car start-up failed to pay millions of dollars in bills, its contractor Monday halted work on Faraday’s $1-billion North Las Vegas, Nev., car factory. [...] The contractor is Aecom, the Los Angeles-based engineering giant. [...]
Faraday failed to pay $21 million due to Aecom in September and owed $25 million in October and $12 million in November, according to Aecom.
— latimes.com
Faraday Future previously in the Archinect news:Faraday Future holds groundbreaking ceremony for $1B Nevada factoryAECOM to build $1B electric vehicle plant in VegasThe "Impossible" Car – Faraday Future's lead designer, Richard Kim, on One-to-One #17 View full entry
Aecom, America’s largest design engineer, will have its skills tested with a contract to build a high-tech factory for Chinese electric vehicle start-up Faraday Future (FF) in Las Vegas.
The work will have a construction value of $500m, signed on a guaranteed maximum price basis, but FF has said in the past it wants the factory built in half the normal time.
In all, FF is reported to be investing $1bn in its new plant.
— Global Construction Review
Related:The Netherlands considers a ban on gasoline-powered vehiclesFaraday Future holds groundbreaking ceremony for $1B Nevada factoryThe "Impossible" Car – Faraday Future's lead designer, Richard Kim, on One-to-One #17Wired takes a look inside Tesla's car factory of the future View full entry
Critics point to a less-than-robust tech scene, layoffs and shuttered businesses as major stumbling blocks, while others applaud the community's transformation. [...]
"The other thing that we would have done differently, knowing what we know now, is really made our goals much more explicit," Hsieh said.
For example, he would have put "collisions" — serendipitous encounters between individuals who can drive innovation — ahead of co-learning, connectedness and even return on investment.
— cnbc.com
Related on Archinect:Vegas is back...sortaLearning from Las Vegas: a look at the Strip through urban planning lensesWill Zappos turn downtown Las Vegas into the next Silicon Valley?70's Vegas underground home on the market for $1.7MSomething is happening in Vegas; but will it convince people to... View full entry
We suspect the city’s notoriously bad traffic and general “aloofness” of the people contributed to its low ranking, as well as its culinary scene, which was also ranked dead last in this year’s poll. — Travel + Leisure
When Travel + Leisure compiled a survey of the places its readers love to visit, it also collected data on the 30 locales they loathe. While Moscow, Russia tops the list of the world's unfriendliest cities, a significant number of the top 10 are located in the United States (including Los Angeles... View full entry
Las Vegas’s recovery, like America’s, seems to have to come to the wealthiest first. [...]
But Sin City’s recovery shows the enduring ability of America to make improbable ideas work. Some 2m people live in a glittering, sprawling city deep in the desert and hardly think that this is strange. And with its mix of tech-obsessed yuppies, ageing baby-boomer gamblers and thrusting Hispanics, its demography resembles America’s future.
— economist.com
Related:Learning from Las Vegas: a look at the Strip through urban planning lensesWill Zappos turn downtown Las Vegas into the next Silicon Valley?70's Vegas underground home on the market for $1.7MSomething is happening in Vegas; but will it convince people to stay? View full entry
Al describes CityCenter as the product of “the Bilbao effect: the notion that buildings designed by celebrity architects bring in tourists, and in particular a higher-end type of visitor”. MGM’s version was to bring in name-brand architects such as Daniel Libeskind, Helmut Jahn and Norman Foster [...].
“It goes against the casino design convention,” Al says, “by having towers that let in natural light and meet the street the way buildings do in other cities” – with retail spaces, not gaming.
— theguardian.com
Foster + Partners’ Harmon Hotel on the Las Vegas Strip is being razed without ever opening. Owner MGM Resorts International received court approval on April 22 to demolish the unfinished 27-floor, oval-shaped tower following a protracted legal battle with its contractor, Tutor Perini Corp., over building defects. — archrecord.construction.com
Late in 2011, [Zappos CEO] Hsieh became even more legendary by announcing almost larkishly that he’d be leading a $350 million effort to rejuvenate a blighted stretch of Las Vegas’ downtown […]
His plan was to spend much of his own personal fortune to transform this lifeless area about a mile north of the neon blitz of the Strip into an entrepreneurial tech nirvana. [...]
Doubters have no place in the ecosystem. Pragmatists stand little chance. A love of hyperbole prevails.
— Wired
Plopped down on a former Marine Corp air station in the geographic middle of Orange County, nineteen solar-powered model homes line the runway to be judged in the U.S. Department of Energy’s 2013 Solar Decathlon. For its first year held away from the National Mall in Washington D.C., the Solar... View full entry