Hot on the heels of Las Vegas’s “City Center” is another luxury hotel determined to make public art, and sculpture in particular, an integral piece of the environment.
The Marina Bay Sands Hotel and “Integrated Resorts” in Singapore opened its doors to the public on April 27th and cut the ribbon its new “art path” the following day. The art path is actually a series of seven pieces of large-scale artwork handpicked by the hotel and resort’s architect, Moshe Safdie. Each of the pieces was selected for its connection to nature and more specifically the elements which the architect wanted to highlight in order to bring awareness to the way that the resort itself is closely connected to the natural world. These pieces are among the few instances of art that are situated on the property, but with the value of the art coming in somewhere between $40 and $50 million the investment is anything but minimal. Aside from art being important to the architect, the sculptures are, part of the plan enacted by the Singapore government to integrate public art into Singapore’s more metropolitan locations.
Safdie perused applications from almost 30 different artists before settling on the five whose works were ultimately selected for display at the Marina Bay Sands. Safdie, 71, insisted on working closely with the artists, from the conceptualization and design stage, all the way through to the final creation of the work. Each of the works represents, is inspired by or somehow integrates one of the natural elements, creating a visual play on the environmental influences that helped inform the design of the hotel, thereby creating a dynamic and fluid integration between the art, the architecture and the environment.
Antony Gormley, whose “Event Horizon” we recently covered for this blog, has contributed one of the most impressive pieces. So enormous that it had to be constructed off-site, broken down into eight “slices” and transported by special container his work “Drift” is a steel drawing in the air, hanging from the ceiling into an atrium. It’s negative space is what is most compelling. “Drift is a symbolic presence in the way humans actually use the space,” said Mr Gormley.
“Raining Forest” by Zheng Chongbin occupies 4,000 square meters in the hotel atrium. It is a collection of 83 tremendous glazed ceramic vessels. Due to the massive size of each of the vessels, the artist actually needed to build a customized kiln with a specially designed rotation in order to ensure that each of the vessels was properly fired. Each of the vessels contains a single tree.
Moving from fire to water are two pieces by artist Ned Kahn. The first is located at the intersection of the retail mall and the waterfront promenade. The acrlyic and glass “Oculous” captures rainwater and channels it into a swirling, spiral pattern. The artist said his intention was to create a space where people can contemplate water, their relationship to the element and how vital it is to our lives.
“Tipping Wall” has a similar effect, with thousands of small channels affixed to the wall, directing and redirecting the flow of rainwater as it travels down a black wall of concrete.
Ned Kahn’s additional work “Wind Arbor”, as its title suggests, is manipulated and shaped by the wind. 260,000 metal “flappers” run along the exterior of the hotel’s atrium and move and flap in time with the breeze creating unique visual patterns.
The hotel’s lobby features wall drawings by Sol LeWitt. These wall drawings are impressive because they are a part of a body of work wherein the artist redefined traditional concepts and convincingly stated that the idea “was” the actual artwork and that someone other than the artist could execute that idea and it would still be the artist’s work.
Wall drawings all over the world painstakingly follow Mr. LeWitt’s directions and a drawing can be executed many times though it can never deviate from the original size color or design.
James Carpenter’s “Blue Reflection Facade” is an artwork consisting of glass and metal fins that follow the serpentine quality of the facade. As visitors pass by they experience visual layering that accentuates the sky while shimmering and constantly changing.
The hotel’s energy is soothing, muted and elegant and the selected art pieces manage to further infuse the space with a feeling of calm and seclusion while still remaining wholly connected to the elements. One hopes that this new interest in incorporating large scale art of high quality in commercial and centralized spaces across the world is more than just a passing trend.
