- Laying out the Building Plan

Hi, my name's Paul Steelman. I'm the CEO of Steelman Partners based in Las Vegas, Nevada. With our offices around the globe. Today, I'm gonna tell you about a little project that we built. It was one million square feet several years ago, named Solaire. The building program, of course, is very important to the overall commercial aspects of the project. After we determine what the building program is, we lay it out in a plan layout that will enable this facility to have success; to have energy.

It's important for our buildings to be driven by energy, not driven by space. So consequently, we try to make our spaces a little smaller. We don't like empty restaurants, we like queue lines. We don't like a room with no people in it, or our porte-cochere with no cars in it. We like the feeling of energy. Energy drives more people, more people drive more commerce, commerce creates more success.

Now, how does that work with planning? Well you can see here is our orange gaming floor. The orange gaming floor, in fact, is the heartbeat of this particular facility. Now, around it you'll see various blue items; planned items. From the bubble diagram now converted to a real plan. These blue pieces of architecture are basically the tandem base activities.

In our activity in gambling, it is part of a tandem activity. True, there are people that just go to gamble. But more than likely, most people go for a dual use. They go for a restaurant and gambling, a show and gambling, a health spa and gambling, a conference and gambling, and so on. So, consequently, what we wanna carefully do is lay out the plan that in fact, the activities that generate the energy; the restaurants, the bars, the theaters, the prefunctional rooms for the ballrooms, are in close proximity to the gaming floor, if not, right next to it.

Now, there are an incredible set of rules about minors in casinos, smoking in casinos, locals in casinos, all of these affect this planning characteristics. Now, about this particular building, this building will remind you of one thing; a warehouse.

Oh my God, how is an entertainment building a warehouse? Well, if you would look in Las Vegas, and you were to go to Google Earth, you would see most of the buildings are warehouse type buildings. We worked four years on the Mirage, and I think the Mirage has two windows in it. So, consequently, what we're trying to do is we're trying to build an inexpensive structure. An inexpensive mechanical electrical system.

The bones of the project we want easily serviceable. So, we do not try to get crazy with our architecture, we use a standard gridded project. Now what is the grid? The grid is determined by us wanting to park underneath of it. That's why the grid is determined. That this is a 18-meter grid that allows for parking on both sides with very few columns.

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