Interiors
Ceiling Cladding
Marina Bay Sands Casino Atrium Ceiling Feature
At its opening in 2010, the Marina Bay Sands Casino was billed as the world’s most expensive standalone casino property. The development located across the water from Singapore’s Central Business District includes a hotel, convention centre, shops, theatres, restaurants pavilions, an indoor skating rink and the world’s largest atrium casino with 500 tables and 1,600 slot machines.
How we helped the client
The CRAFT process…
In-house engineering team created 2D design of aluminium to create 3D curved section
Which resulted in…
Lower cost of fabrication compared with casting individual dies for each individual section
Numbered sections and utilised reverse packing to follow construction sequence (ie. first installed is the last packed)
Less footprint required onsite for materials storage and sorting; also meant quicker installation as sections were installed upon unpacking
Designed custom cable and node system including front house design and numbering of more than 1600 cables and over 3000 nodes
More time was spent during the design phase to implement a more simplified installation system saving the client time on the installation programme. The system also eliminated excessive decision making of site operatives and reduced the number of defects for rectification
Scope of Work
CRAFT was hired for the design development, fabrication and installation of the atrium ceiling feature at the top of the “atrium style” casino. CRAFT was responsible for the aluminium beams and netting of the ceiling feature. The feature weighed 7 tons and was designed to house 132,000 Swarovski crystals and 66,000 LEDs supplied by other contractors.
CRAFT’s scope was successfully completed in July 2009.
Developer
Las Vegas Sands Corp
Owner
Marina Bay Sands Pte. Ltd. (A subsidiary of the Las Vegas Sands Corporation)
Architect
Moshe Safdie Architects
Engineer
ARUP
The CRAFT Process
Rationalization of the Fabrication
One of the main challenges CRAFT faced was understanding the fabrication the 3D organic shape of the painted aluminium feature of the chandelier. The engineers started with initial sketches of curved 2D aluminium sheets that would be welded and joined together to create the curved 3D surface. Before production could begin CRAFT fabricated a number of samples and mockups to improve and refine joint connections between sections. Then larger samples were produced to understand tolerances. Different paints were applied until the desired finish was achieved.
Packing and Transportation
In order to help expedite the unpacking and installation process, CRAFT developed and implemented a reverse packing system which followed the construction sequence. Workers loaded the last sections to be installed first into the delivery container. This meant that once the materials were onsite, the first boxes to be unloaded were also the first sections to be installed. This eliminated the need to sort and arrange boxes onsite as boxes could be unloaded and placed directly in their installation areas before unpacking.
Installation
In order to create continuous lines and provide the hanging infrastructure of the Swarovski crystals, the cable system had to be installed exact to plan which was no small feat. A complex cable system was engineered in which over 3000 custom made nodes and 1600 high performance cables came together to align each of the individual curved box sections. Each cable and node were numbered in the factory and packed in a reverse order so that the installation time was reduced and onsite decision making was limited.
Note of interest
The space inside the chandelier was large enough to fit a regular size passenger bus!
