Season's Greetings Stunner

In the worlds of entertainment, hotel and casino design and corporate branding, bigger is always better. Designers and promoters want eye-catching glitz, glamour and bright lights. They want “Pop!” They want a “Wow!” And for the past 40 years, Stephen Stefanou and his team of designers at Design Solutions, Dallas, Texas, have developed a reputation for big, bold visual displays tailor made for every space and crafted with care down to the finest detail. The grandeur the visual display firm has brought to hotels, casinos, and other public spaces across the world has drawn international acclaim for their unique design – and their scale.

Design Solutions has been commissioned to develop breath-taking displays at some of the country’s most extravagant venues. They have designed gold-leafed, mirror spangled holiday statues and displays at the Bellagio, beautiful LED-lit translucent starbursts and life-sized caribou for the MGM Grand in Detroit, and holiday fixtures of all shapes and sizes at A-plus properties and corporate headquarters around the globe.

The company’s most recent installation, a holiday spectacular at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center on the Potomac River in National Harbor, MD, is just the latest example of the vision and innovation Design Solutions brings to every project.

“When the Gaylord National came to us with a request for a unique holiday attraction, we knew at once that the hotel’s dramatic 18-story atrium would provide us both with a one-of-a-kind challenge and a one-of-a-kind opportunity,” says Stefanou, president and CEO of Design Solutions. “Not only was the space enormous, requiring us to create an equally large installation, its size and height also demanded a material that would be lightweight and highly sculptable.”

From Concept to Creation

Faced with these challenges, the Design Solutions team set out to create an attraction that would not only fill the spacious atrium, but also provide a reason for both locals and tourists to visit the Gaylord during the slower-than-usual winter< months. The visual display would also need to be stunning enough to be seen from the heavily trafficked Woodrow Wilson Bridge (175,000 vehicles daily) and across the Potomac in Washington, D.C. “The Gaylord was very specific a bout their needs. They wanted something that would draw people in from all corners of the city – a true attraction that people would have to see to believe,” he explains.

Following intensive ideation and conceptualization, the team settled on the idea of a Christmas tree. But not just any Christmas tree. They promised to create the largest hanging Christmas tree in the world – a 60-feet tall “Tree of Light” formed from a total of 110 curvilinear holly leaves, each measuring an amazing 8 to 12 feet long. The 7,000- pound seasonal stunner would be topped with a hand-sculpted ribbon bedecked in hand-applied gold leaf. And using technology more commonly associated with The Walt Disney Resorts’ famous outdoor light spectaculars and arena-sized concert shows, the team designed a dramatic lighting scheme featuring 40,000- watt Syncrolite external spotlights and a variety of theatrical lighting and strobe lights that provide lighting from the inside out.

Material Making the Difference

“The combination of size, highly detailed display elements, and mold ability challenges made our choice of material imperative to the project’s ultimate success,” says Stefanou. Based on the firm’s past experience, they quickly chose Eastman Spectar™ copolyester PETG, a durable, flexible and lightweight material perfect for such largescale applications.

According to Stefanou, the material’s flexibility is key. Dubbed “Candy Glass” by the resort’s canny marketers, Eastman Spectar™ possesses incredible, brittle-free bending attributes not matched by competing glass alternatives. A mainstay in visual merchandising environments worldwide, the innovative material enjoys a global reputation for delivering strong, durable and transcendently translucent results.

Phil Coffey, the Gaylord National’s Senior Vice President and General Manager, says that the Tree of Light is “a singular work of art that we are delighted to share with our guests and visitors. We couldn’t be more pleased to showcase this new attraction as the centerpiece of a new mid- Atlantic holiday tradition.”

For more information, contact Lucy Stewart, Eastman Chemical Company, P.O. Box 431, Kingsport, TN 37662, 800-327-8626, E-mail: lstewart@eastman.com, Web: www.spectar.com.
For additional information on Design Solutions, contact Barbara Petricini Buxton, Design Solutions, 2332 Irving Blvd., Dallas, TX 75207, 800-785-0801, E-mail: barbara@designsolutions-usa.com, Web: www.designsolutionsusa.com.