Frank Gehry Breaks Ground On Vegas Research Center
The complex is being built on land donated by the city of Las Vegas as part of its 61-acre Union Park redevelopment project. The institute plans to rent out its public areas at night and on weekends to help meet its operating expenses. The project is funded by the Las Vegas-based nonprofit Keep Memory Alive Foundation for brain disease research, founded by Larry Ruvo, Nevada's senior managing director for Southern Wine and Spirits. The building is named after Ruvo's father, who died of Alzheimer's.
"We didn't design a one dimensional building," says Ruvo. "It's going to be a revenue source for research." The building's banquet hall will be covered by a wildly curvy, undulating metal-and-glass trellis that reaches up to 75 ft tall, while the main entrance will consist of stacked building blocks separated by glass enclosed spaces. The contrast suggests the dual functions of the brain, simultaneously ordered and chaotic, structured and imaginative.