Built Expressions Bangalore :: Grand Lisboa Blossoms As Lotus

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Grand Lisboa blossoms as lotus

Grand Lisboa, situated at the northern-end of the Macau-Taipa Bridge distinguishes itself as a tallest building in Macau and resembles a bright yellow lotus flower, which is the official emblem of China’s Macau Special Administrative Region. The hotel erupting out of the bulbous, eight-story casino complex it surmounts and it is designed to be the most luxurious hotel and casino in Asia, the opulence is a $375million worth. The original Hotel Lisboa has always been the symbol of the casino business in Macau. With the intention of defeating the new challenges from overseas, Sociedade de Turismo e Diversões de Macau, S.A.R.L (STDM) Group has built the second flagship casino, which is Grand Lisboa.

Grand Lisboa is a 58-floor, 261m tall (856 ft) hotel in Macau, owned by Sociedade de Turismo e Diversões de Macau and designed by Hong Kong architects Dennis Lau and Ng Chun Man. Its casino and restaurants became operational in December 2008. The casino offers 800 mass gaming tables and 1000 slot machines. The hotel contains 430 hotel rooms and suites. The Grand Lisboa is the tallest building in Macau and the 118^th Tallest Building in the World (by architectural structure).

The Grand Lisboa Hotel in Macau is combining typical outdoor lighting effects with digital signage technology that will enable the hotel to create and display custom text messages, graphics, animations and video images. The company reached out to Daktronics to design, manufacture and install a ProPixel intelligent lighting system.

The Grand Lisboa’s exterior with a yellow lotus flower similitude is enhanced by an egg podium base, giving an elegant impression of a Faberge egg. The egg podium, which measures 56m by 189m with an area of approximately 10,609sq m, is completely lit up using more than 59,000 ProPixel LED lighting elements that occupy about 9.5 percent of the sphere’s surface. These create a kaleidoscope of moving color that displays various scenes. Shen Milsom & Wilke worked with the LED manufacturer, Daktronics, to create the intelligent lighting system, which combines outdoor lighting effects with the ability to create and display custom text messages, graphics, animations, and video images. The technology is essentially a video display system with true digital video processing. It is capable of displaying more than 4.3 trillion colors. The building embraces a golden egg-shape base, which alludes to good fortune and prosperity. At night, the ‘Starsphere’ base of the building is like a kaleidoscope, displaying

colourful patterns and visible messages, thanks to the 1.2 million light emitting diodes (LEDs) on its surface.

Assigned by Sociedade de Turismo e Diversoes de Macau, AECOM provides structural and geotechnical engineering consulting services to this 54-floor, leaf-shaped hotel and an oval entertainment center. Due to its multifaceted structure which requires the use of complex foundation techniques, the project recently won a Commendation Award at the 2009 Structural Excellence Awards Competition in Hong Kong. The podium floors consist of various long span column free areas of over 40 meters, and a large cantilevered area supported by a cable stayed structural arrangement. The podium entertainment area is covered by a large column-free elliptical sphere of 40 meters x 80 meters x 40 meters.

The sphere is designed as a thin shell structure braced by a skeletal steel frame. A floating tunnel, which links to the existing Lisboa, has been constructed according to the horizontal pipe jacking technique. There are four basement levels, and the design adopts a top-down construction sequence. The complex building design also satisfies the seismic design requirement of Macau's building code.

Facts

Type: Building

Status: Completed

Country: China

City: Macau

Street Address: Avenida Do Infante Dom Henrique

Building Function: hotel / casino

Structural Material: steel / concrete

Start of Construction: 2003

Completion: 2008

Global Ranking: 177^th tallest building in the world

Regional Ranking: 79^th tallest building in Asia (excluding the Middle East)