REALLY LEARNING FROM LAS VEGAS: THE WORK OF WINDOM KIMSEY AND TSK

Aaron Betsky

Las Vegas Architects

It is hard to avoid the work of Windom Kimsey and TSK in Las Vegas. If you arrive there as a visitor through Harry Reid International Airport, you will see the control tower the firm designed as you taxi in and there is an even chance you will deplane through the lofty expanse of the D Gates Terminal it authored. If you are coming there for a convention, you cannot avoid the sweep of the canopy that arches over the 1.44-million-square-foot (133,780-square-meter) West Hall addition to the municipal facility. If you happen to be a native, you will know the Clark County Regional Justice Center Kimsey was responsible for designing, as it towers over downtown and is the sight of many a controversial court trial. You might encounter the firm’s architecture when you get your driver’s license at the DMV Sahara Service Center. You or your kids might be educated at one of the dozens of elementary, middle school, high school, community college, or university buildings they have designed in the area.

TSK is by far the most dominant design firm of what is now, with well over two million inhabitants, the twenty-eighth-largest metropolitan area in the United States—and one of the most visited tourist destinations. Yet there is a good chance you will not have heard of the firm or Kimsey. That is because the one place where you will not encounter TSK’s architecture is in buildings for which Las Vegas is known, namely its hotels, casinos, and all the razzle-dazzle retail, entertainment, and shopping that goes with that world. TSK are Las Vegas’ native architects, the ones who design the places where people work, live, learn, and play. Not only that, the firm designs many structures that would seem to resist architecture, and that makes its contributions not as noticeable as they should be.