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INSTALLATIONS
PROJECTION LIGHTS & STAGING NEWS
The Palazzo is four times the size of the structure that had previously held the title as the
largest LEED-certified building.
Linear LEDs for cove lighting, used instead of cold cathode or neon, didn’t require a compromise on color. The wattage restrictions for the tower corridors were a mere 0.5
watts per square foot.
The Desert Turns Green
Energy-Conscious Design Helps the Palazzo Capture LEED Certification
By JenniferWillis
There’s a new player on the Las Vegas
Strip: The Palazzo — “palace” in Italian
— is a AAA five-diamond luxury hotel
and casino resort offering the height of sophistication
and elegance.
But the $1.9 billion Palazzo is also the largest
LEED-certified building in the world, having
been awarded Silver LEED (Leadership in
Energy and Environmental Design) status by
the U.S. Green Building Council in recognition
of the property’s commitment to “green” technology
and construction across categories of
sustainable sites, water efficiency, indoor environmental
quality, materials and resources,
and energy and atmosphere.
A sister property to The Venetian, The
Palazzo is owned by Sands Group and opened
in January 2008. Entertainment lighting systems
company 4Wall Entertainment — with
locations in Las Vegas, New York and Phoenix
— tackled this project alongside lighting designer
Martin van Koolbergen, who is a partner
at Kaplan Gehring McCarroll Architectural
Lighting in Los Angeles.
Monster Control
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For Buddy Pope, senior project manager
at 4Wall, a significant challenge of this project
was simply the size of the property.
“We have a nine-page spreadsheet of all
of the equipment,” he says. 4Wall divided the
project into two sections: the podium — including
the casino, the retail mall and public
spaces — “and the rest of it; the restaurants,
the shops, the theatre, the night clubs, the
spa, all that kind of stuff.”
“The podium had 23 dimmer racks in it by
itself, along with a monster amount of control
stations,” Pope says.
But the biggest challenge in lighting the
space was energy conservation. With two
years between ground breaking and opening,
the project was already mid-way through
construction when the decision was made to
seek LEED certification.
“The Palazzo had started as a very environmental
project to begin with,” Koolbergen
explains. “They were already approaching a
lot of the systems for LEED certification. It was
a natural path to say, ‘Okay, if we’ve come this
far, we might as well continue.’”
Lighting on a Diet
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But the property still needed to open on
schedule. With several hundred types of fixtures,
both interior and exterior, Koolbergen
faced a big challenge. Where there originally
had been no wattage restrictions, Koolbergen
found himself suddenly limited to a mere 0.5
watts per square foot in the tower corridors,
for example.
“And .5 watts is a very low level compared
with what’s typical in lighting corridors in any
of the casino towers,” he says. “It was a very
strict requirement to create the moods that
were required. The primary challenge was
to retrofit the original design to bring The
Palazzo into compliance with the LEED certification
system.”
When asked how many iterations the
lighting design went through, Koolbergen
laughs.
“We made constant changes to it,” he says.
“It was a completely fluid project. We’re constantly
refining the architecture and the lighting
design to create the best moods. Something
would be suggested, something would
be designed, and as it was going up and we’d
all be at the site; we’d look to see how that
could be improved.”
The Big LEED
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Coming from California with stringent
restrictions from Title 24, the California Building
Standards Code, Koolbergen and KGM
are always looking to the most energy efficient
lighting and control systems. To meet
the even more restrictive LEED requirements,
Koolbergen took things a step further to help
The Palazzo — four-times larger than the previous
largest LEED-certified structure worldwide
— to attain silver status.
“In typical cove lighting conditions in
any casino, we all were accustomed to using
cold cathode or neon to illuminate the coves,”
Koolbergen explains. Instead, the decision
was made to go to a linear LED product produced
by GE Supply.
“It was very interesting to see what the
differences were in terms of the energy savings
for that, and the colors that were acceptable,
based on the new fixture types, to accentuate
the warmth of the architecture,” says
Koolbergen. “It was certainly a challenge that
we got the same outcome that we were used
to getting in previous years.”
But in the end, Koolbergen didn’t have to
compromise on color.
“The central configuration of the casino
is a giant backlit glass barrel vault, and there
was a series of mock-ups with color changing
LEDs,” he explains. “We would say, yes, that’s
the color we should use. But then the owner
would come in and say, okay, this is the color
we should use.”
Koolbergen laughs about the back-andforth
discussions, but says the warm ambience
called for in the design was easily
achieved.
When describing the main goals of the
design, Pope and fellow 4Wall Project Manager
Darin Hagen respond simultaneously:
“Make it work.” They then cite the need for
controllability and ease of maintenance in
addressing the energy management requirements
for the property’s LEED certification.
From a more aesthetic standpoint —
while still operating within the LEED restrictions
— Koolbergen’s job was to enhance
The Palazzo’s traditional architectural components
with hidden sources, giving the appearance
that the decorative fixtures are illuminating
the space.
“We wanted to accentuate the elegance
of that space, refined elegance with a sophisticated
atmosphere,” he says. “We highlighted
individual elements to create drama in the
open space planning and accentuate the art
and sculpture displayed throughout the project.”
Standing Tall
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As for the tower, The Palazzo stands out
from its sister property, The Venetian. A highpressure
sodium light source was chosen for
The Palazzo’s tower, in contrast to the metal
halide source used to illuminate The Venetian.
“While the architecture might be similar,
the lighting had a slight twist to it to kind of
set it apart on the Strip,” Koolbergen says.
For The Palazzo podium’s entertainment
lounge, “we got a Wholehog,” says Pope. He
describes the area as a theatrical rig with a
small stage, Color Kinetics for color and the
exterior of the building.
Koolbergen says it’s unusual to use so
much daylight in a casino property, and this
speaks to the green-mindedness of the overall
project. The Palazzo’s two- and three-story
circulation spaces are equipped with skylights
and glazed windows.
“Typical casinos are very driven from the
inside without any natural light,” says Koolbergen.
“Using the ETC Unison system, we
were able to save energy because of the daylight
harvesting that was available, dimming
lights in response to the amount of available
natural light.”
Photo cells and astronomical timers were
also used to conserve energy. Pope and Hagen
regularly choose ETC on 4Wall projects
for “reliability, customer support, ease of installation
and the high level of controllability.”
It was a natural fit for The Palazzo, as LEED certification
requires lighting controllability.
“A lot of properties, they just run circuits
back to breaker panels,” Pope says. “Being
able to dim any circuit in the building is definitely
unique.”
“We relied on the control system to allow
us to raise and lower light levels to give us increased
lamp life, utilizing that system to its
fullest potential, and then utilizing new lamp
sources,” Koolbergen explains. “We didn’t necessarily
have to change many of the actual
fixtures that had already been ordered. We
just had to reconfigure some of the lamping
inside of it.”
Koolbergen says the ETC Unison system
with ETC Sensor-Plus dimming is very energy
efficient and makes lighting control uncomplicated
when creating different moods —
whether in response to daylight streaming
into the casino through skylights, or to evoke
a more intimate atmosphere in the entertainment
lounge.
“The lighting control system was in response
to the circuiting that we had created
so that the lights on the wall could be separately
regulated from lights that are highlighting
the gaming tables, from the decorative
fixtures to create a balance of lighting in
the space itself,” Koolbergen says.
The Palazzo’s control system is entirely
24 PLSN NOVEMBER 2008