CityCenter

Okay, I'm now starting to understand that this chunk of Las Vegas that I approve of architecturally is called CityCenter. It opened in 2009 and includes a cluster of hotels, casinos, condominiums and shops that are noteworthy for their use of green technologies and aesthetically pleasing design. The center includes the Mandarin Oriental, Aria, Vdara hotels and the Crystals shopping center, all of which we explored. The condominiums that I praised in the previous blog are also part of the center; they are called the Veer Towers and catch the eye in part because they lean in opposite directions.

The photos here show the interior of the Crystals shopping center, where we dined at the Wolfgang Puck restaurant seen below. Crystals is an interesting and uniquely configured space punctuated with large scale sculpture by known artists such as James Turrell.