A Wet Effect in the Desert
The 8,500-square-foot lounge E4 in Scottsdale, Arizona has four element-theme environments. Aside from the backlit murals in the Earth, Air, and Fire rooms, E4’s lighting gems are four 12-foot Aquallusion columns—acrylic columns that use airflow technology to create the look of water flowing inside each dry pillar—in the coolly decorated Liquid Room. Dave McKnight, president of Orlando, California-based Design Concepts, created the pieces. “They’re basically all installed around the dance floor and function as light and motion,” McKnight says. “It looks like there are bubbles flowing.” The DJ booth includes controls to alter the speed, direction, and color of the light to fit the music and crowd.
Telling Clubbers Where to Go
Filled with what look like bubbles of light, Diva Lounge stands out from its college-bar-filled neighborhood of Somerville, Massachusetts, near Boston. “It’s all one big room,” says the venue’s designer, Studio Luz Architects president Anthony Piermarini. “[We tried] to make smaller spaces through color and lighting effects, to make another world of this one long space.” The dawn-hued, three-dimensional lighting appears otherworldly indeed. Piermarini covered Diva’s ceilings and walls with skylight replacement pieces, and illuminated them with LEDs to create a warm cloudike glow.
Cracked in a Good Way
Chandeliers and candelabras continue to deck nightlife venues, but new technologies often inspire new interpretations of such seasoned centerpieces. At Silk, the Pechanga Resort and Casino’s 28,000-square-foot nightclub in Temecula, California, LED lighting plays an integral role throughout, while a fiber-optic chandelier takes center stage. Crafted in an inverted-pyramid shape, the chandelier has 4,000 strands of responsive cracked-fiber cable. “It’s like fiber-optic cable, except the cable is exposed,” says Peter Maradudin, former chief lighting designer of Visual Terrain, who headed the project. “It’s been cracked along its length, so it emits light out the side. It will do color changing through different parts of the chandelier, so it’s quite sinuous. Just the size is awesome: It’s like a giant jellyfish.”
Fancy on the Ceiling
The Borgata hotel and casino’s nightspot Mur.mur opened this July in Atlantic City with long lines of plush banquettes and fine finishes. But the 300-capacity venue’s most striking aesthetic are the scores of light orbs that float along the ceiling. To create the effect, SJ Lighting president Stephen Lieberman, the lighting designer behind Tao in Las Vegas, Crobar in New York, and Nocturnal in Miami, used 54 of Pulsar’s ChromaSpheres—orbs of glowing LEDs that can be programmed to run through the color spectrum and pulse in time with the music—in two sizes. “When I looked at the space, the place looked really flat and plain, with no texture to it,” he says. “So I made a pretty bold statement by putting all of these ChromaSpheres out on the ceiling.”
Vegas Va-Va-Voom
Las Vegas is the epicenter of over-the-top hot spots, and when the nightclub management team Light Group created Jet at the Mirage, the venue got an impressive, sky-high light design that’s no exception to the rule. Light panels top the dance floor in the swanky interior designed by Jeffery Beers. Installed by John Lyons of Avalon Sound and the Avalon nightclubs, these squares of light are set flush against the 15-foot ceiling and can change color patterns to fit the mood. And because of the density of the panels’ pixels, they can also display video or signage for events.
—Chrissi Mark
Posted 11.15.06
Photos: John Horner (Diva Lounge), Theo Wargo/WireImage (Mur.Mur), Bruce Talbot (Liquid)
The 8,500-square-foot lounge E4 in Scottsdale, Arizona has four element-theme environments. Aside from the backlit murals in the Earth, Air, and Fire rooms, E4’s lighting gems are four 12-foot Aquallusion columns—acrylic columns that use airflow technology to create the look of water flowing inside each dry pillar—in the coolly decorated Liquid Room. Dave McKnight, president of Orlando, California-based Design Concepts, created the pieces. “They’re basically all installed around the dance floor and function as light and motion,” McKnight says. “It looks like there are bubbles flowing.” The DJ booth includes controls to alter the speed, direction, and color of the light to fit the music and crowd.
Telling Clubbers Where to Go
Filled with what look like bubbles of light, Diva Lounge stands out from its college-bar-filled neighborhood of Somerville, Massachusetts, near Boston. “It’s all one big room,” says the venue’s designer, Studio Luz Architects president Anthony Piermarini. “[We tried] to make smaller spaces through color and lighting effects, to make another world of this one long space.” The dawn-hued, three-dimensional lighting appears otherworldly indeed. Piermarini covered Diva’s ceilings and walls with skylight replacement pieces, and illuminated them with LEDs to create a warm cloudike glow.
Cracked in a Good Way
Chandeliers and candelabras continue to deck nightlife venues, but new technologies often inspire new interpretations of such seasoned centerpieces. At Silk, the Pechanga Resort and Casino’s 28,000-square-foot nightclub in Temecula, California, LED lighting plays an integral role throughout, while a fiber-optic chandelier takes center stage. Crafted in an inverted-pyramid shape, the chandelier has 4,000 strands of responsive cracked-fiber cable. “It’s like fiber-optic cable, except the cable is exposed,” says Peter Maradudin, former chief lighting designer of Visual Terrain, who headed the project. “It’s been cracked along its length, so it emits light out the side. It will do color changing through different parts of the chandelier, so it’s quite sinuous. Just the size is awesome: It’s like a giant jellyfish.”
Fancy on the Ceiling
The Borgata hotel and casino’s nightspot Mur.mur opened this July in Atlantic City with long lines of plush banquettes and fine finishes. But the 300-capacity venue’s most striking aesthetic are the scores of light orbs that float along the ceiling. To create the effect, SJ Lighting president Stephen Lieberman, the lighting designer behind Tao in Las Vegas, Crobar in New York, and Nocturnal in Miami, used 54 of Pulsar’s ChromaSpheres—orbs of glowing LEDs that can be programmed to run through the color spectrum and pulse in time with the music—in two sizes. “When I looked at the space, the place looked really flat and plain, with no texture to it,” he says. “So I made a pretty bold statement by putting all of these ChromaSpheres out on the ceiling.”
Vegas Va-Va-Voom
Las Vegas is the epicenter of over-the-top hot spots, and when the nightclub management team Light Group created Jet at the Mirage, the venue got an impressive, sky-high light design that’s no exception to the rule. Light panels top the dance floor in the swanky interior designed by Jeffery Beers. Installed by John Lyons of Avalon Sound and the Avalon nightclubs, these squares of light are set flush against the 15-foot ceiling and can change color patterns to fit the mood. And because of the density of the panels’ pixels, they can also display video or signage for events.
—Chrissi Mark
Posted 11.15.06
Photos: John Horner (Diva Lounge), Theo Wargo/WireImage (Mur.Mur), Bruce Talbot (Liquid)
E4
Diva Lounge
Silk
Mur.mur
Jet
