A Luxury Casino Antes Enormous Art in Singapore

Designed by architect Moshe Safdie, the building complex — which resemble a group of leaning playing-card decks — stands 55 stories high, topped by a hovering 2.5-acre SkyPark that overlooks Singapore's harbor. Exotic plantings, restaurants, convention spaces, and swimming pools stud the Sands, turning it into a sprawling business-and-pleasure environment.  However, repeated delays in the building's construction and grievances over allegedly faulty amenities during the hotel's preview somewhat cloud the project's fast-approaching debut.

The art is another story. Selected by Safdie, an Israeli architect who studied with Louis Kahn and is best known as the designer of the Skirball Cultural Center (and the still-mysterious Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art), the works are of a scale rarely achieved. Gormley's Drift, for instance, is a 15-ton stainless steel polyhedran that hangs over the hotel's atrium. A trio of works by the late Sol LeWitt — Wall Drawing #917, Arcs and Circles, and Wall Drawing #915 — contribute a blast of wall-engulfing color. Other gargantuan pieces on view include commissions from Chongbin Zheng, James Carpenter, and Ned Kahn.

The Marina Bay Sands, developed by gaming-industry titan Las Vegas Sands, will be the second-most-expensive casino in the world when it opens on June 23. The product of Singapore's legalization of gambling in 2005, the enterprise is hoped to bring in $1 billion per year.

artinfo.com