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Though sunk into its sloping site, the casino's planting does not yet evoke the original idea of entering through a berm. Design attention is focused on entrances.
PHOTOS Copyright PAUL WARCHOL
Project: Mohegan Sun Casino
Uncasville, Connecticut
Client: Mohegan Sun
Concept and Interior Architect:
Rockwell Group--David Rockwell, principal; Jay Valgora, director of design; Paul Vega, David Fritzinger, Suzanne Couture, Masako Fukuoka, Linda Laucirica, Julia Roth, Eve-Lynn Schoenstein, Jeanne Valdez, Alice Yiu, interior design; Carl D'Alvia, Robert Ashton, Ehab Azmy, Alex Brown, Howard Chang, Rosa Maria Colina, Eric Epstein, Masako Fukuoka, Maria Teresa Genoni-Alvarez, Niels Guldager, Chin Lee, David Lefkowitz, Alex Li, David Mexico, Tom Pedrazzi, Chris Pollard, Joe Richvalsky, Robert Robinowitz, Alex Ross, Sally Ross, Michelle Segre, Paul Shurtleff, Michael Silver, Nina Stern, Cathy Taylor, Raymond Tom, Sam Trimble, David Wilbourne, Lorrin Wong, staff
Architect: Brennan Beer Gorman/ Architects--Hank Brennan, AIA, partner-in-charge; Mario LaGuardia, AIA; Marc Gordon, Alan Infante, Nick Baratto, Greg Galford, Ernie Acosta, Sarge Gardiner, Louis DiFusco, Marlon Fernandez, Tony Layco, Ed Descalzo, Katie Brennan Smith, team
Engineer: DeSimone, Chaplin & Dobrin (structural); Lehr Associates (mechanical, electrical, plumbing)
Consultants: Mohegan Tribe (tribal); EDSA (landscape); Focus Lighting (lighting); David Jacobson Associates (Casino)
Construction Manager: Morse Diesel
Short of changing the odds, the only way casinos can compete with one another today is to provide more exotic venues in which their customers can lose money. This explains the new phenomenon of casino as fantasy environment--owing more to Walt Disney than to Damon Runyon. The trend is tailor-made for New York City architect David Rockwell, whose Rockwell Group, best known for themed restaurant interiors, designed the Mohegan Sun Casino (their first) along with architect Brennan Beer Gorman, also of New York.
The Mohegan Sun got its start when London-based entertainment magnate Sol Kerzner, whose Sun International owns such properties as South Africa's flamboyant themed resort island of the Lost City, helped organize the descendants of the Mohegans, a largely defunct tribe of woodland Indians in southeast Connecticut. Together they built a casino to compete with Connecticut's other casino, built in nearby Ledyard five years ago by the Mohegans' old rivals, the Mashantucket Pequots.
The Mohegan Sun's 240-acre site included a 400,000-sq-ft building, which in its former life was a nuclear-research facility. After a false...