Outstanding award submission! The LINQ Hotel & Casino. Elkus Manfredi Architects.https://twitter.com/WANAWARDS/status/684771147720830980
Mixing paint in the office.
The Exterior: Color Tells the New Story. I am very fortunate to be part of the amazing Elkus Manfredi Architects team on this project. It began with an audacious idea: “why don’t we paint it plaid?”
The challenge for the new LINQ exterior: change the conversation, make a major statement about the future of Las Vegas using sophisticated, modern, connective design that manifests the fresh creativity of the millennial imagination. With only paint as the material and color the language, The LINQ stands apart as something entirely unique, young, fashion-forward, and hip, a major impact, both in Vegas’s bright desert daylight and in the visual cacophony of the city at night.
Solution: A five-color blue scheme was developed, worlds apart from the predominantly one-note desert-sand color of the old hotel and other resorts on the Strip. Blue paints were custom-mixed to desaturate the black pigment, resulting in five very distinct high-chromic blues. Perpendicular panels on the façades were treated with accent colors that change when seen from different angles and spell out secret messages in binary code, such as “ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN” and “YOU ARE AMAZING.” At night, a simple LED light program turns the entire building into a slow-burn kaleidoscope, moving from rich blues and chartreuse to violets to pinks and corals. The light show connects The LINQ to its surroundings – a first for the Strip – embracing the adjacent High Roller, the world’s tallest observation wheel, in the shower of color. The impact – powerful, beautiful, visceral. The means – simple, creative, inexpensive. The story –nothing less than a paradigm shift in the Las Vegas design vernacular. Summarized in the words of renowned casino designer Roger Thomas, the old Imperial Palace hotel has been “transformed into an exciting and provocative landmark with nothing more than a brilliantly conceived coat of paint.” With one bold stroke, the baton is passed to a new generation.
