Hospitality Design - September 2014 - 134

special feature education
Lee Cagley
Iowa State University College
of Design
"The Iowa State University interior
design program actually uses
hospitality design as a touchstone
for all the various subspecialties of
interior design we teach," explains
Lee Cagley, who is a professor and
department chair of the university's
interior design program as well as
principal of Las Vegas-based firm
Lee Cagley Design. "This is because
hospitality design forces the student
to achieve maximum results with
minimal space and create the
perception of a complete lifestyle
within a tightly prescribed area."
The program offers both
undergraduate and graduate degrees
in interior design with a wide range
of curricula. Last fall's graduate
studio in advanced experimental
interior design provided students
the opportunity to create a hotel
property in the existing footprint of
an abandoned development project
in Las Vegas. The $4.5 billion project,
which was slated to become the
mixed-use Echelon resort complex,
would have included five hotels
but was halted when the economy
faltered. "The 10 students were
granted access to the resort's existing
drawings and kept the foundations
and structures as they currently
exist for the proposed Mondrian
and Delano hotels on the southeast
corner of that vast site," Cagley
explains.
The students' task was to design
a boutique, self-contained, smallscale resort in that footprint that
was "as forward-thinking and ecoresponsible as possible, given the
demands of designing specifically for
the future of the Las Vegas market,"
Cagley says. But their working
method was a bit unorthodox. After
touring the property, groups returned
to campus to charette the project for
two weeks, breaking the spaces into

134

10 distinct areas, each assigned to
a different student. Once assigned,
students were not allowed to look at
what the others were doing until the
final critique at the end of the course.
The "exquisite corpse" method of
non-collaboration only allowed
them to discuss and negotiate the
boundaries between the spaces they
were designing-for example, one
student's storefront that abutted
another's hallway-but not to share
any other information. They were
allowed to choose any color schemes
and spatial organizational principles
that they felt matched with the name
they had chosen for the property-
Carbon, referencing the mutability
of the element and its essentialness
to life.
"When, on the final critique, the
various 10 parts of the hotel were
revealed and assembled, everyone
was shocked at how beautiful the
property turned out," Cagley says,
"and how much coherence had arisen
from seeming chaos."

September 2014 hospitalitydesign.com

The Iowa State student
concept Carbon
boutique hotel and
casino: a promenade
seating area, VIP gaming
dining complex, casino
center bar, and private
dining space.
http://www.hospitalitydesign.com
Hospitality Design - September 2014

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