CACHE CREEK CASINO
IIDA Award of Merit
At the beginning of this casino’s design process, the architects requested a 3-day charrette, asking the lighting to play a lead role in their loose “spiritual, colorful, and abstract geometric” concept. We were given a unique challenge to use light to establish the casino’s identity through color, dimension, and animation, along with the usual complexities of security illumination, visual hierarchy, and tight budget.
The solution uses light as a design element, creating abstract luminous forms in many adaptations throughout the space. Glowing feather icons announce the entrance while sparkling, softly-animated stars pull you inside under a sweeping arch. In the main drum, our concept turned columns into jeweled torches that heat the room with spiritual energy. Ignited by blue neon, filtered quartz uplights and downlights radiate yellow, carefully blended with orange-filtered fluorescents in column and outer coves, cooling to red from custom ceramic metal halide wall-washers.
A “nighttime-street” theme was characterized with cobalt-blue trims and downlight pools, a blue neon horizon and fiberoptic stars. Warm-glowing stylized streetlight forms were suggested to provide romantic warm counterpoint to the twilight, while brighter attractions vie for attention along the “streetscape”.
