The Harmon hotel, CityCenter’s gateway to the Las Vegas Strip, has suddenly been cut down to about half its intended size. Topping out at 28 stories instead of the proposed 49, the incredible shrinking Harmon seems unfortunately fated to look like a stubby, squashed stepchild next to its soaring CityCenter siblings, the 61-story Aria Resort & Casino and the 57-story Vdara condo-hotel.That is the result of construction flaws — 15 floors of wrongly installed rebar — that forced MGM Mirage, which is developing the project with Dubai World, to rapidly call for a significant reduction of the non gaming boutique hotel. MGM Mirage canceled the Harmon’s 207-unit condominium component — the top half of the building — and postponed the opening of the hotel to late 2010.
With its elegantly elliptical curve and signature variegated blue-and-white exterior suggesting sea glass, the Harmon was expressly designed by British superstar architect Lord Norman Foster to be one of the newly defining iconic buildings in this young, aspiring city. It was designed to harmonize in scale and detail with the other elements of the complex.
This is very unfortunate for Foster who's list of "world's first" will also include this now stumpy tower. This also does not portray a very good image of Las Vegas as many designers will now start to shy away from the city so as not to have their designs bastardized as Foster has had his.
Details obtained from Joe Brown's "Adaptation or Disaster?
Image obtained from: www.lasvegassun.com
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