Geoff Manaugh explains that this isn't the first time that contemporary starchitecture has burned passerby- the Frank Gehry-designed Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles has had the same effect.
Manaugh wonders if this power could be turned to positive uses:
"...could you deliberately design an architecture without walls, using only thermal gradients-defining areas of public use and congregation solely based on heat? Could these and other parabolic reflections of solar energy be deliberately used as a tactic of architectural intervention and urban design?"
Comments
CityCenter a victim of recession (NYT: Las Vegas downturn)
CityCenter is discussed at length in Las Vegas Faces Its Deepest Slide Since the 1940s, Oct. 3.
Nevada leads the nation in housing foreclosure rate and unemployment rate; yes, topping Michigan.
"And in the midst of all of this (downturn), standing as a prime symbol of Las Vegas’s taste for extravagant risk — or perhaps of a fateful misreading of a changing landscape — is a huge new “urban community” called CityCenter, which opened next to the Bellagio on the Strip.
Built by MGM Resorts and the government of Dubai, CityCenter is the largest privately financed construction project in United States history. It is an $8.5 billion labyrinth of hotels, casinos, retail malls, meeting rooms, auditoriums and spas spread across 76 acres with 16 million square feet of floor space. "
Irvin Dawid, Palo Alto, CA