Category: Architecture

Missed opportunity at Greektown Casino Hotel

What first struck ArchBlogger when the Greektown Casino Hotel was nearing completion a year or so ago were the varied shades of dark blue with which the designers clad the exterior.

It all felt a bit daring and Miami -- Detroit really isn't accustomed to a lot of strong color in its skyscraper glass -- but was also so pretty to look at, that A.B. rather got his hopes up.

But a bit like the Motor City Casino Hotel, which looked kind of interesting before they topped it with that damned party hat (albeit a hat that creates a marvelous space for their top-floor restaurant, Iridescence), the final product fell short of expectations.

The Greektown Casino Hotel is the dark-blue tower, stage left, as seen from the top of the Guardian Building.

In the Greektown case, designed by Southfield's Rossetti firm, the designers seemed to take a cool concept -- a glassy tapestry of contrasting blues -- and then inexplicably decided to crap that up with horizontal punch-outs of ordinary clear glass that, from a distance, look a lot like the scaffolding system window washers use.

Those punched-out window terraces -- or whatever they are -- mostly undercut the mesmerizing effect of the multi-colored blue glass facade, the architectural equivalent of robbing Peter to pay Paul.

A.B. hasn't yet been inside the hotel, so he can't say what purpose those punch-outs serve, but he wouldn't be surprised if from within the building they offer cool visuals, and perhaps a giddy sense of stepping out beyond the building facade.

Still, he's noticed a trend with Rossetti projects -- the tendency of the interior to trump the exterior.

As evidence, ArchBlogger offers the firm's Ford Field, which took a cool industrial-warehouse approach to a vast structure (check out the rear face, which breaks into five or six "separate" buildings in a most satisfying way), but then crowned it with a fishbowl-curve picture window that stretches across most of the front facade. From within, that huge window provides eye-popping views. From without, it looks stupid and inappropriate, tacked onto a building whose aesthetic is in every other respect rectilinear and industrial.

Or take Rossetti's Compuware Building, not one of A.B.'s downtown favorites. On the inside, the soaring lobby is a pretty cool, with its thin, trickling fountains cascading from high overhead.

But viewed from Campus Martius Park, the building front looks like a fancy color TV, with boxy little "speakers" poking out here and there.

Does A.B. dislike everything Rossetti does? No. Their Auburn Hills YMCA is a fun geometric exercise. And some of their West Coast work is very cool.

For some reason, however, Detroit seems to bring out their look-at-me designs heavy on gimmickry and light on elegance.

With a casino hotel, of course, gimmickry is inevitable. Motor City's hotel looked promising when it was just a simple silver building apparently suspended between two enormous concrete shoulders. But then they clad the latter in brick and added the foolish lampshade.

MGM Grand's hotel, which one colleague refers to as "the toaster," still feels a bit unfinished and abrupt. And what's with that big box on the roof?

The MGM Grand Hotel -- which, to be fair, does look good in dramatic light, the way-too-visible box on its roof at left notwithstanding.

And finally, Greektown suffers from an over-jazzed and incomprehensible facade. A pity, since the basic elements -- particularly before the garish sign went up on the roof -- were so promising, an elegant dash of color on the east side of Woodward that seemed to whisper, "C'mon over. This is cool."

Would that the architect had had more faith in color alone to lure and delight the eye.