Rockwell Architecture, Planning and Design, P.C. 5 Union Square West New York, New York 10003 tel 212-463-0334 fax 212-463-0335
Crystals at CityCenter Design Fact Sheet
Use: Retail, Entertainment, Dining
Location: Crystals is part of the 67-acre mixed-use CityCenter development along the Las Vegas Strip between Bellagio and Monte Carlo resorts.
Size: 120,000 SF (Rockwell Group’s scope); 500,000 (overall)
Client: MGM MIRAGE and Infinity World Development Corp
Background:
Rockwell Group is designing the interior architecture for Crystals, the central retail, entertainment and dining district of the LEED-Gold CityCenter in Las Vegas, a joint venture between MGM MIRAGE and Infinity World Development Corp, a subsidiary of Dubai World. Crystals will be the connective core of the hotels, resorts and residences that make up this new groundbreaking metropolis. Rockwell Group joins a world-renowned group of architects who have contributed to this monumental urban project, including Daniel Libeskind, Cesar Pelli, Rafael Viñoly, Norman Foster and Helmut Jahn.
Design Concept: Rockwell Group envisioned Crystals as an abstracted 21st century park to fit into this new larger-than-life urban center in Las Vegas. The organic, curvilinear vocabulary of the interior architecture reinvents and re-imagines the idea of the central urban park as a social gathering place for shopping and dining.
Design Highlights:
Interpretations and abstractions of nature animate the scenery that complements the sharp angles of Studio Daniel Libeskind’s crystalline exterior, with a glowing three-story wooden sculpture inspired by a modern tree house. Floor-to-ceiling columns and trellises above are abundant with hanging plants as a reinterpretation of a gazebo, and a dynamic flower carpet at the node of the three promenades in Crystals that transforms with the seasons. Natural and tactile materials abound in response to CityCenter’s overall LEED Gold aspirations, including the flowing 24-foot grand bamboo stair, inspired by Rome’s Spanish steps.
LEED Gold Details:
Beyond the actual design, however, was the effort to use materials, techniques and processes that were in keeping with LEED Gold specifications.
• All the woods we used are FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certified, including the sapele and mahogany used for the tree house, and the mahogany for the balcony rail and planters. • We chose bamboo as the material for the grand stair that goes up 24 feet. Bamboo is a wood that easily replenishes, so we thought it would make sense to highlight it in a central design feature. • Themed elements construction will be fabricated off site to allow for the majority of off-gassing to occur off the premises. • Integrated walk-off grates – all entries will have integral walk off grates to help with indoor air, maintenance, and durability of finished surfaces. • No added urea formaldehyde to wood products. • All the substrates, sealants and the terrazzo flooring contain no toxic agents, and comply with all LEED criteria. • Many of our structures use 100% recycled steel, including the hanging garden. • Water efficient fixtures will achieve 38% savings over code, over 1.8 million gallons of water saved annually. • All the integrated lighting are energy efficient LED systems. Firm Description With a desire to create immersive environments, Rockwell Group takes a cross- disciplinary approach to its inventive array of projects. Based in downtown New York with satellite offices in Madrid and Dubai, our innovative, internationally acclaimed architecture and design firm specializes in hospitality, cultural, healthcare, educational, product, theater and film design. Crafting a unique and individual narrative concept for each project is fundamental to Rockwell Group’s successful design approach. From the big picture to the last detail, the story informs and drives the design. The seamless synergy of technology, craftsmanship and design is reflected in environments that combine high-end video technology, handmade objects, special effects and custom fixtures and furniture. Rockwell Group Lobby Past projects include the Chambers hotel (New York); W New York and W Union Square; the Walt Disney Family Museum (San Francisco); Maialino in the Gramercy Park Hotel (New York); Aloft hotels, Starwood Hotel & Resort’s new urban roadside oases; “Hall of Fragments,” the entrance installation to the 2008 11th annual Venice Architecture Biennale; the Kodak Theatre, home of the Academy Awards ceremony (Los Angeles); set design for the 2009 81st Academy Awards; Canyon Ranch Miami Beach; Casinos of the Earth, Sky and Wind at Mohegan Sun Casino (Uncasville, CT); interior work and brand conceptualization for the jetBlue terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport; the Broadway musicals “Hairspray” and “Legally Blonde;” the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore; Adour Alain Ducasse at The St. Regis New York; Nobu restaurants worldwide including New York, Hong Kong, Melbourne, and Dubai; Bar American; Gordon Ramsay’s Maze (London); and a collection of wall coverings for Maya Romanoff. Currently projects include the Elinor Bunin-Munroe Film Center at Lincoln Center; Morgans Hotel Group’s Ames Hotel (Boston); and Crystals, the central retail and dining component of MGM MIRAGE and Infinity World Development Corp’s CityCenter in Las Vegas.
In May 2009 Rockwell Group broke ground on Imagination Playground at Burling Slip in the South Street Seaport area of Lower Manhattan, a public-private partnership with the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation. Imagination Playground is a rich environment of diverse materials that encourages unstructured child- directed “free play,” the very sort of activity that is vital to developing cognitive, social and emotional skills. Through a partnership with KaBoom!, the leading non- profit dedicated to playground development all over the country, Rockwell Group will be offering fixed-site and other scalable models of Imagination Playground to communities nationwide.
Pleasure: The Architecture and Design of Rockwell Group, was published by Universe, a division of Rizzoli Books in 2002. Spectacle by David Rockwell with Bruce Mau – a book examining the history and public fascination with larger-than-life manmade events – was published by Phaidon Press in October 2006.
David Rockwell was honored with the 2009 Pratt Legends Award, the 2008 National Design Award by Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt for outstanding achievement in Interior Design, a lifetime achievement award from Interiors magazine, an induction in Interior Design magazine’s Hall of Fame and the Presidential Design Award for his work for the Grand Central Terminal renovation. Rockwell serves as Chairman of the Board of the Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS (DIFFA), and as a board member of City-Meals-on-Wheels and the Public Theater. He is a member of the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum’s committee on Exhibitions.
5 Union Square West | New York, NY 10003 | (212) 463-0334 | www.rockwellgroup.com Project List
Hotel & Spa
Affinia Hotel, New York, NY Alex Hotel, New York, NY Aloft Hotel Concept, Nationwide Ames Hotel, Boston, MA Art’otel, London, England Belvedere Hotel, Mykonos, Greece Benjamin Hotel, New York, NY Cancun Hotel, Cancun, Mexico Canyon Ranch Miami Beach, FL Carlton Hotel, New York, NY Chambers Hotel Chambers Hotel, Minneapolis, MN Chambers, New York, NY Confidential Spa, Phoenix, AZ El Conquistador Resort Puerto Rico, Condado Plaza Fairmont Hotel, Chicago, IL Four Seasons Hotel, Washington DC Greenwich Hotel, New York, NY Hyatt Andaz Wall Street, New York, NY Ibn Battuta Walk Master Plan, Dubai Ink 48, New York, NY Le Meridien, Oran, Algeria Virgin Spa at Natirar Pacific City, Huntington Beach, CA Se San Diego, CA Virgin Resort and Spa, Peapack, NJ W Hotel, Vieques, Puerto Rico W Hotel, New York, NY W Hotel, Union Square, New York, NY W Hotel Paris-Opéra, France Residential Watercolor Inn, Watercolor, FL
2 Gold Street, New York, NY 75 Wall Street, New York, NY 455 Central Park West, New York, NY Bridge Tower Place, New York, NY CityPlace One, Atlanta, GA Murano Grande, Miami, FL Octagon Park Apartments, New York, NY One Carnegie Hill, New York, NY One Union Square South, New York, NY Palm Beach Condominium, Palm Beach, FL Spring Street Hotel Queens West Buildings 1, 2, 3, 6 & 7, Queens, NY Riverhouse, New York, NY The Lyric, New York, NY The Sagamore, New York, NY The Sonoma, New York, NY The Tate, New York, NY Tribeca Tower, New York, NY West Port, New York, NY
5 Union Square West | New York, NY 10003 | (212) 463-0334 | www.rockwellgroup.com Adour Alain Ducasse at the St. Regis Hotel, New York, NY, Washington, D.C. Alma de Cuba, Philadelphia, PA Restaurants & Bars A Voce, Time Warner Center, New York, NY Bar Americain, New York, NY BLT Burger, Las Vegas, NV Blue Ginger, Wellesley, MA Bobby Flay Steak, Atlantic City, NJ Bobby’s Burger Palace, Monmouth, NJ, Smithtown, NY, Mohegan Sun Casino, CT Bourbon Steak, Four Seasons, Washington D.C brgr, New York, NY Café at Country, New York, NY Café Carlyle at the Carlyle Hotel, New York, NY Café Citron Saks Espresso and Juice Bar, New York, NY Café Gray, New York, NY Matsuhisa, Belvedere Hotel Carriage House Culinary Center, Peapack, NJ Chambers Kitchen at Chambers Hotel, Minneapolis, MN Cherry Nightclub, Las Vegas, NV Citarella, New York, NY Country at the Carlton, New York, NY Django, New York, NY Emeril’s Fish House, Las Vegas NV Emeril’s, New Orleans, LA, Miami, FL, Atlanta, GA Geisha, New York, NY Grand Central Terminal Dining Concourse, New York, NY Adour Alain Ducasse, New York Heartbeat at W New York, New York, NY J&G Steakhouse, Scottsdale, AZ Kittichai, New York, NY Le Bar Bat, New York, NY Lollipop Club, New York, NY Maialino, Gramercy Park Hotel, New York Matsuhisa, Athens, Mykonos, Greece Maze, London, England Mesa Grill: Las Vegas, Bahamas Michael Jordan’s The Steak House NYC, New York, NY Nectar, Berwyn, PA Nobu, Nobu 57, Nobu Next Door, New York, NY Nobu 57 Nobu: Bahamas, Dallas, Dubai, Hong Kong, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Macau, Melbourne, Mexico City, Moscow, San Diego, Waikiki Noche, New York, NY Olives and Underbar at W Union Square, New York, NY Olives, Xen and Bamboo Bar, Roppongi Hills, Japan Payard Patisserie and Bistro: New York and Las Vegas Pod, Philadelphia, PA Rosa Mexicano: New York and Washington D.C. Ruby Foo’s Dim Sum and Sushi Palace, New York, NY Samba Grill, Las Vegas, NV Serafina, New York, NY Simon at Palms Place, Las Vegas, NV Strip House: New York, Houston, Las Vegas, Naples, Key West, San Juan Sushi Samba Rio, Chicago, IL Sushi-Zen, New York, NY Tatou, Beverly Hills, CA, New York, NY Tchoup Chop, Orlando, FL The Library at the Regency Hotel, New York, NY Tisserie, New York, NY Town Restaurant at Chambers Hotel, New York, NY Vong, New York, NY Washington Square, Philadelphia, PA Wildwood Barbeque, New York, NY Yellowtail Restaurant, Las Vegas, NV
5 Union Square West | New York, NY 10003 | (212) 463-0334 | www.rockwellgroup.com Master Planning & Mixed-Use Asbury Park, Asbury, NJ Complexe Cirque, Hong Kong, China Coney Island, Brooklyn, NY Crystals at CityCenter, Las Vegas, NV Disney Village Master Plan, Paris, France Downtown Disney, Lake Buena Vista, FL East River Park, New York, NY Mixed-use Development, Monterrey, Mexico Montovun Polo Club, Istria, Croatia Old Convention Center Old Convention Center, Washington D.C. Pier 17 Studies, New York, NY Pier Park Drive, Panama City, FL Waterfont Redevelopment, New York, NY Central Department Stores, Various Cities, India Jersey Gardens, Elizabeth, NJ Market City Mall, Various Cities, India MGM MIRAGE, Atlantic City, NJ Mohegan Sun Casino, Phases I - III, Uncasville, CT Mohican Casino, Sullivan County, NY Pier at Caesar’s, Atlantic City, NJ Seminole Paradise, Hollywood, FL CityCenter Starhill Center, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Retail Adidas, New York, NY Best Cellars, New York, NY, Boston, MA and Seattle, WA CBS Retail Store, New York, NY Crayola Works, Baltimore, MD Disney Flagship Store, Times Square, NY FAO Schwarz, New York, NY Forth & Towne, Various Mauboussin, New York, NY Meijer Stores, Grand Rapids, MI Mikasa Retail Experience, New York, NY F.A.O. Schwarz Morgenthal Frederics Opticians, New York, NY Mauboussin Origins, New York, NY Stuart Weitzman Redesign Concept
Sports Stadiums
Coca-Cola @ Stade De France, Paris, France Coca-Cola Skyfield, Turner Stadium, Atlanta, GA Comerica Park for the Detroit Tigers, Detroit, MI Pittsburgh Steelers, Pittsburgh, PA Miami Dolphins Stadium, Miami, FL The Hacienda, NFL, Los Angeles, CA The New Coliseum, NFL, Los Angeles, CA
Detroit Tigers’ Comerica Park
5 Union Square West | New York, NY 10003 | (212) 463-0334 | www.rockwellgroup.com Theater & Set Design Catch Me If You Can, Seattle, WA Cirque du Soleil, Orlando, FL Disney Cruise Lines Downtown Disney, Orlando, FL Film Society at Lincoln Center, New York, NY Hollywood Playhouse, Hollywood, FL Kodak Theatre for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, Hollywood, CA Loews Theatres 42nd Street at E-Walk, New York, NY Loews Theatres Broadway at 84th Street, New York, NY Nokia Theater, Times Square, New York, NY Cirque du Soleil Phantom of the Opera Theater, the Venetian, Las Vegas, NV Siam Paragon Theater, Bangkok, Thailand Sony Theatres at METREON, San Francisco, CA Star Theatres, Southfield, MI Syracuse Stage Renovation, Syracuse, NY 42nd Street Entertainment Building, New York, NY 81st Annual Academy Awards, Hollywood, CA “Armed and Naked in America,” Naked Angels, New York, NY “All Shook Up,” Broadway, New York, NY “Catch Me If You Can,” 5th Avenue Theater, Seattle, WA “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,” Broadway, New York, NY Hairspray “Omnium Gatherum,” Variety Arts Theater, NY “Hairspray,” Neil Simon Theater, NY “Hairspray,” National Tour “Legally Blonde,” Golden Gate Theatre, San Francisco and Broadway, NY “The Rocky Horror Show,” Circle in the Square Theater, NY Museum & Exhibit Team America, Paramount Pictures
Walt Disney Family Museum, San Francisco, CA “Hall of Fragments,” entrance installation to the 2008 Venice Architecture Biennale Incubator, New York, NY Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame, New York, NY Federal Hall Visitors’ Center, New York, NY Motown Center, Detroit, MI SteelStax, Bethlehem, PA Declaration of Independence, Salt Lake City, UT “Reinventing the Globe: a Shakespearean Theater for the 21st Century,” Washington D.C. I.D. Magazine’s Annual Design Awards Exhibition, 1996, 1997, New York, NY Walt Disney Family Foundation
Health Care & Public Works Imagination Playground, Imagination Playground in a BOX, nationwide Jet Blue Terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport, Queens, NY L!BRARY Initiative, Robin Hood Foundation, New York, NY P.S. 6, New York, NY The Children’s Hospital at Montefiore, Bronx, NY Infusion Bay, Children’s Oncology Unit, The Children’s Hospital at Montefiore, Bronx, NY The DeVos Children’s Hospital Concept Design, Grand Rapids, MI WTC Temporary Platform, New York, NY
Children’s Hospital at Montefiore
5 Union Square West | New York, NY 10003 | (212) 463-0334 | www.rockwellgroup.com Office Rockwell Group, New York, NY McCann-Erickson, New York, NY Foote Cone Belding, New York, NY @radical.media, New York, NY, Santa Monica, CA
Foote Cone Belding
Strategy & Branding
brgr, New York, NY City of New York Club Med Gap Stores Marriott International McDonald’s Meijer Stores Miami Dolphins Stadium Nobu Hotel Proctor & Gamble Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide The Coca-Cola Company Products Tom’s Hotels
APF Frames Maya Romanoff & Dennis Miller Appoggi Dennis Miller Desiron Leucos Lighting Collection Maya Romanoff Wallcovering Collection Meijer Stores Mikasa The Rug Company Saloni Ceramica Steelite Swarovski Publications
Pleasure, Rizzoli and Universe Publishing, 2002 Spectacle, Phaidon Press, 2006
5 Union Square West | New York, NY 10003 | (212) 463-0334 | www.rockwellgroup.com Events Absolut Bar at Esquire Apartment, New York, NY Bon Appetit Supper Club and Cafe, New York, NY City Meals-on-Wheels Chef’s Tribute Event, 2001-present, New York, NY DIFFA Dining by Design, 1996-present, New York, NY The Great Bazaar, Lincoln Center, New York, NY Metropolitan Home Design 100 Gala, Four Seasons Restaurant, New York, NY New York Magazine’s Taste of New York, 2009
Foote Cone Belding
5 Union Square West | New York, NY 10003 | (212) 463-0334 | www.rockwellgroup.com
Museum Review | Walt Disney Family Museum Exploring the Man Behind the Animation October 1, 2009
By Edward Rothstein
SAN FRANCISCO — Given the heritage of the place, you expect to see a ride at the Walt Disney Family Museum, which opens on Thursday in the Presidio here. And in a way, there is one, since the museum does just what Disney thought a ride should do when he created Disneyland more than half a century ago: it tells a story.
And while the museum is almost leisurely in relating its narrative, only here and there veering into uncharted terrain, and while children will quickly pass by many sections that will fascinate their elders, there are more than enough thrills for everyone. Who needs Fantasyland, Tomorrowland, Caribbean pirates, Matterhorn rides or a robotic Abraham Lincoln when the story being told touches the experience of anyone who had contact with the 20th century and its Disneyesque amusements?
The ride in question is, of course, just a walk, but it leads through 19,000 square feet of galleries in this new museum complex, a $110 million transformation of an Army barracks and two neighboring buildings, devoted to telling the story of Disney’s life and work. This might seem a bit secondhand, since it means gazing at original character sketches and animation notes for the seven dwarfs (Dopey: “Droopy effect in all clothing” or Bashful: “Head usually down, eyes looking up”) rather than seeing them Hi-Ho-ing into their mine. And it can hardly be said that Disney’s career is the stuff of adventure stories: he knew how to make cartoons and amusement parks, and he created companies that could do both. It is a life of relatively tame domesticity, extraordinary hard work and occasional controversy.
Photographs by Noah Berger for The New York Times
The motivation behind the museum did not seem to promise much more excitement. As the decades passed since Disney’s death in 1966, his daughter Diane Disney Miller discovered that fewer and fewer children had any idea that her father was more than a corporate logo. Some recent biographies, she said in a recent interview in The New York Times, also portrayed him and his marriage in an unflattering light. So the Walt Disney Family Foundation, a nonprofit organization independent from the company, decided to create a museum entirely devoted to Disney. His personal archives are enormous, but major copyrights and important films and artifacts are held by the Walt Disney Company, so it lent the museum materials, including a two-story-high “multiplane” animation camera that was used to create three-dimensional effects for “Pinocchio” and “Fantasia.” A 114-seat theater at the museum will host concerts and screen Disney films.
Photographs by Noah Berger for The New York Times Early visitors browsing inside the Walt Disney Family Museum on Sunday. The space is created from a former Army barracks and two neighboring buildings.
At first, the museum (Page & Turnbull are the architects) seems to be precisely what it promises to be: a family institution designed to undo anything negative and celebrate the man. The lobby is really a large gallery given over to displays of Disney’s many awards, certificates and statuettes. They include Harvard’s honorary degree and the special Oscar designed for “Snow White” in 1938, but also minutiae like a plaque presented to Disney in 1959 during “National Want-Ad Week” commemorating the ad he answered in 1920 seeking a “first class man” to do “cartoon and wash drawings.”
But the impulse to put the rest of the family attic on display is resisted, and as overseen by the founding executive director, Richard Benefield (who had been deputy director of the Harvard University Art Museums), the Disney Museum is far from being an air-brushed portrait. While there are no hints of the domestic tensions described, for example, in Neal Gabler’s fine recent biography, and while there is much more to understand about the arc of Disney’s life and the frustrations of his final decades, his imagination was so capacious, his ambition so disciplined and his achievements so vital to the evolution of American entertainment media that he seems a natural force. The family movies on display show, at the very least, Disney’s childlike sense of play, particularly with his two young daughters.
Disney’s drive, the museum demonstrates, was relentless. Having mastered the basics of animation in the ’20s, Disney kept pushing at the possibilities. (The exhibition design, by Rockwell Group, helps provide a basic education in animation’s history.) In one of his earliest achievements, “Alice’s Wonderland,” a young girl visits an animation studio and falls asleep, dreaming herself into the cartoon world, mixing fantasy and reality, a vision Disney must have shared. Small screens show clips of Disney’s Alice cartoons, framing them within larger drawings, amplifying the playfulness.
Disney entered a new era with his first sound cartoon, “Steamboat Willie,” the third starring Mickey Mouse. We take it for granted now, but at the time the work meant selecting an expensive technology, developing a technique for coordinating music and image, and convincing distributors the cost was worth it. Nothing about it was easy: one wall contains an array of 348 enlargements of drawings from that cartoon; they constitute less than a minute of action.
Photographs by Noah Berger for The New York Times A young visitor examines a wall of 348 Steamboat Willie frames, enough for only 16 seconds of animation.
And there were other challenges. Disney’s first company went bankrupt. His second, created with his brother Roy, was nearly destroyed by a jealous rival who lured away staff members and took over one of Walt’s early cartoon characters, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.
Out of that debacle grew the idea of Mickey Mouse, an insouciant creature whose pluck and autonomy must have been appealing in the wake of disappointments (those traits also found resonance with the temper of the times). A wall of display cases features Mickey memorabilia that will make collectors drool; it also shows how quickly Disney had figured out how to merchandise his characters, transforming the film business.
But if Disney had not been interested in character and story, this might have led to just an early onset of today’s merchandising fever. He was constantly running out of money, not because he was profligate but because he was a compulsive idealist, straining for something beyond the reach of common cartoons.
By the time he created his first feature-length work, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” he had transformed the very notion of animation. Disney insisted that cartoons literally animate their world, bring it so thoroughly to life that even inanimate objects would react to events. He pushed his staff to strain for realism (and sponsored drawing classes in his studios). But he was interested in something more than reality: even tables and trees would display character.
One of the most fascinating objects here is an enormous notebook created by Herman Schultheis, a technician in the camera-effects department in the late ’30s, in which he documented how images were produced in “Pinocchio” and “Fantasia.” Next to it, an animated display of the book responds to touch, so you can almost feel the creators’ imagination at work as they transmute real objects into fantastical washes of color.
Photographs by Noah Berger for The New York Times Some displays include touch-screens to flip through notebooks.
The museum goes on to describe the animators’ strike of 1941, which so shocked Disney that after World War II, he became an eager witness for the House Un-American Activities Committee; the displays deftly present interviews with workers on both sides of the picket lines.
Other exhibits cover the war years, postwar live-action movies (like “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”), nature films and, finally, in an annex to the original Presidio Building, a gallery in which Disney’s own toy train is on display — one he rode around his property — along with a model of his original plans for Disneyland.
In that final gallery, the pace is quick, the detail slight. In barely the space it took to define the beginning of Disney’s animation revolution, we hear about his television work in the 1950s (like “Zorro” and “The Mickey Mouse Club”), the years of continuing films, both flops and hits, and Disney’s final fantasies of an urban utopia to be constructed just beyond Disney World in Florida; it was never built.
There is much to admire here (space is also devoted to Disney’s creations for the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair and to the movie “Mary Poppins”), but it becomes clear that while his energy and imagination remained intact until his death from lung cancer at 65, the trajectory he mapped out in the ’30s in animation was left for others to explore.
He was a pioneer in packaging and synergy, but nothing else was to break artistic ground the way those early films did, and no animated movie ever got Disney’s full attention again. He was preoccupied with other things. It is as if a cartoon character had broken out of all celluloid constraints and decided to test its fantasies in the real world — Alice returning from Wonderland. Those efforts had mixed results, but it was an exceptional ride.
The Walt Disney Family Museum opens on Thursday at 104 Montgomery Street, the Presidio of San Francisco; (415) 345-6800, disney.go.com/disneyatoz/familymuseum. dkcdkcdkc NEWS fromfromfromDan Klores Communications 386 Park Avenue South, 10th Fl. • New York, NY 10016 • Tel. (212) 685-4300 • Fax (212) 685-9024
June 19, 2009
David Rockwell, the New York architect and designer, describes Dubai as “an incredible city of superlatives”, a list he has helped expand considerably. Andrew Henderson / The National
David Rockwell, the New York architect and designer, describes Dubai as “an incredible city of superlatives”.
He has helped add to the list of superlatives. His first project was to design the Nobu restaurant at the Palm Atlantis, where he created a surreal environment reflecting the spectacle of the hotel and its man-made Palm Jumeirah island home.
“One of the most important aspects of the design was choreography: how the guests would enter, how they would move through the space,” Mr Rockwell says. “We envisioned the guests coming in from the beautiful Middle East beachside, or the other-wordly landscape of Atlantis. We wanted them to have a smooth transition into our space, while also introducing them to a totally new and sensuous experience.”
So Mr Rockwell crafted a marine environment where enormous, hand-woven plant fibre panels line the restaurant walls and ceilings to evoke a setting under an ocean wave. Dubai is appealing for designers, he suggests, because in many ways it is a blank slate.
“You look at Dubai, you think of all the towers,” Mr Rockwell says. “But down on the ground … where are the parks? Where are the communal spaces? It’s not conceived of from a pedestrian point of view. As a designer, that’s an opportunity.”
Since Nobu’s opening, his Middle East portfolio has expanded with another Nobu restaurant, this time in Doha, and an Aloft Hotel in Abu Dhabi, prompting him to open a Dubai office.
On a recent visit, Mr. Rockwell is obviously exhausted. (He asks the photographer to use settings that would best mask his fatigue.) Still, the affable designer becomes enthusiastic as he describes a portfolio spanning 25 years.
As well as restaurant commissions, his work has taken him from Broadway (the stage production of Hairspray) to Hollywood (the set of this year’s Academy Awards).
The Oscars was a particular design challenge: how to make a TV programme watched by hundreds of millions of viewers across the globe look like an intimate gathering of film enthusiasts? Mr Rockwell’s solution was to scrap what he saw as the impersonal layout of the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles that he had designed nine years earlier in favour of a setting more like a small night club.
“It’s no longer unique to see a close-up picture of a movie star. Everyone sees them,” he says. “What’s unique is if you can invite the audience on TV to participate and not just observe.”
His interest in design was inspired by his mother, a vaudeville dancer and choreographer. She had long given up her dancing career by the time David, the youngest of her five sons, was born. Instead, she set up a theatre group in the New Jersey shore community where the family lived. Mr Rockwell says that even as a child he was struck by the stark contrast between the private nature of suburban life and the public space of the community theatre.
“There was very little stuff happening publicly except this community theatre,” he says. “I think I was kind of hypnotised by everyone coming together and creating this thing.”
Then, when he was an adolescent, the family moved to Guadalajara, Mexico. “It was almost like taking that suburb and turning it inside out. The public realm was incredible: market places, bull rings, music squares with mariachis …” Growing up in Mexico introduced him to an important distinction in design that he uses in his practice: constructing buildings versus creating spaces.
“What I remember about it isn’t so much the buildings. You know, as architects we tend to be focused on the fixed building, but what I remember about the experience in Mexico was the rituals and the experiences that linked the buildings.
“I remember the sense of dance and the sense of performance. Clearly my interest in colour and light came from those early days in Mexico because the light is so intense.” Mr Rockwell returned to the US to study architecture at Syracuse University in New York but it was a Broadway production of Dracula that gave him the idea of combining architecture and theatre.
“It blew me away and the next day – I was young and didn’t know better – I called up the lighting director and said I’d like to come and work for you for two weeks for free, and if it works out I want to stay. And I did.” His big break came in 1983 when he designed a small Japanese restaurant in New York called Sushi Zen. He had little space and a tight budget, but he focused on one concept: a bar in the shape of a lightning bolt.
“This project was an early example of my longtime focus on creating places where people can best connect and gather,” he says. “And that was the reason for creating the jagged bar, as opposed to one long bar where you can only socialise with and see the people sitting directly next to you.” With that success, he established his own firm, The Rockwell Group, in 1984.
A decade later, Mr Rockwell would cement his relationship with Nobu and go on to design projects as diverse as Cirque du Soleil and the viewing platforms at the September 11 Ground Zero site in lower Manhattan.
He emphasises that all his projects are about bringing people together socially.
“I realised that there was something about creating places that allow a celebration and celebrate a moment that interests me, and I was lucky enough to build a successful practice around that,” Mr Rockwell says. “We’re fortunate as a firm that we’re not focused just on one industry and there’s clearly globally less money to build projects,” he says, pointing out that some of the greatest projects, such as the Rockefeller Center in New York, were created at the height of economic turmoil. “Dubai wanted to be the biggest and the brightest. That can’t go on forever.” But like New York in earlier times of financial fallout, he believes Dubai will find a way to proceed with its often grand ideas. “I think there’s an interesting opportunity in Dubai.”