Architecture Digest

Hoover Dam Science and Research Centre:
The Las Vegas and the Bolder-City area has a fast growing population with a highly land consuming way of development. The majority of people find work in the service sector and the major turnover can still be found the Casinos.
Throughout the fact that this city has such a “single use” industry and with an eye on Las Vegas future I was searching for a way to turn the potential of this highly developed infrastructure landscape into a more sustainable investment that should turn the whole area into something of what the next generations and the whole country could take benefit of.
The major target groups are those who enjoy the casinos and nightlife program that Las Vegas offers. In response to that I will provide the area with a museum/science centre in order to reach a more mixed target group with more interests in culture and science and to support a more sustainable and intercultural development.
The project is a science and research centre that includes a science centre as a museum for the latest inventions of science that bridges the fields of science research and art with a special weight on sustainable energy research. Other parts of this development are the research units containing laboratories in different scales and the necessary administration program.

The overall master plan and detailed Geometry:
The development will take place at the existing Hoover Dam site.
The existing access road will remain the same and becomes the access road for the visitors from both sides of the river. An overall system will than open up the building site in both, the natural shape of the landscape and the overall organisation of the project.
An intelligent geometry will be the overall structure for the whole project. This geometry can be described as a stick-based structure, which performs as a tree fractal system which is able to intersect two perpendicular flows. The one for people and the other one for the water. The structure will change from a vertical, regular system on both sides of the river and will change into a horizontal orientated system to response to the massive pressure of the water. The structure will perform as both, pure structure and as penstock, according to program and position.
This system reacts on several parameters and changes thickness, direction, openings and scale where the program from overall scale to detailed parts is requiring this.



Project by Gustav Duesing
at the Architectural Association, London