Boutique Design - July/August 2009 - (Page 32)

ICRAVE International Casino Grabs Hold of New York’s ICRAVE Takes it’s Experiential Design ‘It’ Design Firm Style Global An BY KELLY HUSHIN N ew York City-based architecture and design firm, ICRAVE, has established its “choreographic” approach to design across the continent in restaurants like the recently completed Sushi Samba in Las Vegas to clubs in its own backyard — perhaps you’ve heard of Tenjune? Or STK? Such destinations have become fixtures in the realm of high-end hospitality design because they do what good design aims to do: make it all look effortless. While these modern, clean, cosmopolitan environments look like their planning could have been minimal, of course the opposite is true. People across the world have noticed ICRAVE’s ability to create seemingly-effortless environments that actually require a skillful attention to detail and thus the firm’s appeal has gone global. With dozens of successful U.S. projects under its wing, ICRAVE is making the leap across continents to design internationally. 32 • boutique DESIGN july/august 2009 The recently-opened Chandelier Room lounge at the W Hoboken ICRAVE has established itself as successful “first-timers.” The team landed the W Atlanta-Midtown in 2006 without ever having designed a hotel. Now ICRAVE is working on its first casino property, the Holland Casino Rotterdam, a renovation the firm will have worked on for about two and half years come its slated October opening. “When they came to us in 2007, we had never done a casino floor before,” said Leah Mendelson, Managing Director at ICRAVE. “We’d done clubs, restaurants in casinos…but not a floor with slot machines. They came to us because they appreciated the work we had done and wanted to create an experience. They were missing a piece of business and wanted to go after it. They were missing the F&B, the multiplicity of the experience.” At ICRAVE, design is all about creating an experience. Whether it’s an understated luxury environment for frequent flyers at JFK airport’s Jetblue terminal, or a playful, artsy lounge like the Chandelier Room at the new W Hoboken, ICRAVE wants visitors to leave with a memory. It was that approach to creating spaces that attracted the owners of the Holland Casino to the firm. The casino recognized that ICRAVE could create a space in which guests could explore and play rather than feel overwhelmed by endless tables, slots and overbearing lights. “There’s a real people-moving and wayfinding component to the design,” said Siobhan Barry, Partner at ICRAVE who is managing the design for the casino. “Wherever you are, there’s a sense of orien-

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Boutique Design - July/August 2009

Boutique Design - July/August 2009
Contents
Boutique Buzz
Photos from YLH Las Vegas
Snaps from the Boutique 18 Bash
Hotel Designers, Owners and Operators Speak to International Design and Development Trends
Banyan Tree Mayakoba Fuses Cultures without Missing a Beat
Celeste Cooper Creates a New ‘Comfort’ Inn, The Inn @ St. Botolph
Business Sense
GKV Architects Design the Ultimate Bathing Experience, an In-room Spa in Istanbul
ICRAVE Takes its Experiental Design Style Global
Point of View
Wanda Jankowski Interviews WATG’s Meagan Jacobi
The Best of ICFF
The Goods
DREAMbook
Calendar/Advertisers Index

Boutique Design - July/August 2009