Client: MGM Resorts International/The Light Group
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada USA
Size: 180,000 s.f.

City Center is a mixed use, 18 million square feet, development by MGM Mirage that features buildings by several world renowned architects. The unique seventy-six acre urban resort is located in the heart of the famed Las Vegas Strip and is a collection of luxury hotels, condominiums, casinos, shopping facilities, and entertainment venues. To date, it is the largest privately financed development in the history of the United States and is also the largest LEED Certified project in the world.

City Center consists of a collection of spectacular hotels and residences, casinos, spas and retail areas, including Aria, Vdara, the Mandarin Oriental, Veer Towers and Crystals. Located at the base of Aria, the main resort and casino, the pool deck is a lush tropical lagoon. It is an intimate sanctuary of cabanas around a luscious pool area in the midst of the larger vision of the City Center. The structures constitute a fusion of the stunning beauty and richness of the tropics and the simplicity of our contemporary culture. The architecture consists of a series of overlapping contours that were envisioned as a metaphor of fluidity and as a means to establish a spatial hierarchy for the distinct lounge areas. The project serves 1,500 guests and consists of 52 separate cabanas,2 bars, a restaurant, retail and a European pool lounge.

The individual buildings, designed as a family of structures set within a landscape, offer unique variation while unifying the overall composition of the pool deck and resort. This is achieved through the use of a similar material palette and through the formal relationships of those materials, which plays between monolithic forms and panelized sections that create unique figure group relationships.

The material palette was selected to reflect the architecture and luxury of the tropics in a combination with the simplicity of contemporary minimalism. The used materials, including massaranduba wood and various textiles, were chosen not only for their haptic and optical sensations, but also in accordance with our commitment to the environment.

for Graft Inc. (Los Angeles)
Managing Partner: Alejandra Lillo