Entry number: ie08004
Project Name: Border Grill
Building Type: Remodel
Completion Date: 8/28/08
Architect: assemblageSTUDIO
Building Location: Mandalay Bay Hotel, Las Vegas, NV 89119

Design Team:
Electrical Engineer: JBA Consulting Engineers
Landscape Architect:
General Contractor: MIG Nevada
Structural Engineer: Mendenhall Smith Structural Engineers
Photographer: Henri Sagalow Photography
Mechanical Engineer: Petty Engineering Las Vegas, LLC

Statement of design approach:
The design seeks to make connections between the handmade crafts of Mexico and the building traditions of our desert region.

Narrative:
The project is located inside Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino. The original design was constucted over 10 years ago and was almost entirely all drywall. Keeping with the restaurant's graphic expression the design incorporates materials to express and connect to the cultural patterning and man-made artistic values. Rammed earth, wood and blackened steel form the connection to natural materials. The graphics are enlivened through a vibrant color pattern. The entire existing facade was removed to allow the new design to be extremely open. This created a visual connection to the patio and natural daylight beyond. The dining area has become more intimate through a lowering of the ceiling with the suspended wood beams. The overall restaurant has been opened to the hotel. Privacy in the dining area is maintained through the wood beam wall. The rammed earth walls become a signature element to draw patrons into the restaurant.

Sustainability:
Taking heed of the needs of the client, an authentic Mexican restaurant which has shifted towards an organic, locally produced menu, the design seeks to make connections between the craft of Mexican cooking and the building traditions of our region's ancestral people. In doing so, the design brings the experience of the desert to the visitors of its surrounding hotel and casino in a contemporary and sophisticated way.

Rammed earth construction has been used in the Southwest since the time of the Anasazi. The ancient traditions of building that today have been glamorized as "green design", such as use of local materials which can easily be returned to the earth, were the essential principals of building and survival in the harsh, treeless climate of southwestern America.

The problem of constructing rammed earth in the surrounding hotel casino prevented us from using traditional rammed earth building techniques. To overcome this, a panelized system was devised which allowed us to bring the sensual, natural texture and weight of rammed earth into the heavily trafficked area of the casino floor. Using locally procured subsoil, the panels were created in an on-site warehouse and assembled in the later phases of construction. The typical mix of synthetic/composite/plastic materials of the standard hotel interior is replaced with local labor and assembly; the typical condition of disjunction and illusion is replaced with authenticity and texture. A space is made into a place.

The wood in the project was a red oak veneer which helped eliminate waste from using conventional solid hard wood. The existing concrete floor was reused.