CityCenter, Las Vegas

The plant is fully automated to ensure efficient cooling and heating. Waste heat from a 9MW co-generation plant is used to fulfil a significant portion of the domestic hot water requirements of hotels, restaurants, spas and pools, while a heat exchanger enables free cooling of chilled water. Heat is also recovered from the exhausts of outdoor air-handling systems.

Throughout the development, there is energy-efficient lighting, low-flow plumbing fixtures to conserve water, and intelligent guest-room controls to turn off lights, reduce air conditioning and close curtains when rooms are unoccupied. WSP also worked to optimise the building envelope to incorporate external solar shading.

As well as the central plant, WSP designed the building systems for Blocks A and C of the development, which include a range of luxury hotel and residential accommodation, several towers and a 190,000 square foot casino.

One of the major challenges was dealing with the environmental tobacco smoke from the casino area. CityCenter is the first casino to use displacement ventilation on the gaming floor, where air is supplied at floor level and the smoke is lifted by the buoyancy of the air and carried away from other people.WSP worked closely with Clark County officials to obtain the necessary permits to implement the scheme in a cost-effective manner.

Despite the high potential loads of maintaining a comfortable environment in Nevada’s desert climate, the systems that WSP designed enabled the buildings within the development to achieve a Gold accreditation under the stringent LEED sustainability rating scheme.