Dear Readers:
It’s been my version of Driving Miss Daisy. My mother has always loved casinos. Let’s be honest; casinos have become Senior Day Care Centers. Being of a certain age, however, she could use a younger driver to navigate the highways between home and the two casinos in Connecticut: namely, me. Since I have absolutely no luck and will have to earn every dollar I’ll ever have, I would go to enjoy the interior design. Anyone who has not been there should take a trip.
Foxwoods looks like the “Emerald City” standing there amid rolling hills. The interior design is a sort of Native American neoclassicism, in cool aquas and lavenders. The Mohegan Sun, on the other hand, makes use of untamed, animalistic deconsructivism. This is a form of architecture using building fragments, as though they are barely attached to one another, hence the term DE-construction. The new hotel is all glass, and looks like shards of ice breaking through an ice floe. The outer walls are slanted and breathtaking.
While both are well done, I adore the design in the Mohegan Sun, especially the lighting design in the original casino. It’s magical, and the lighting of the new casino is also very innovative with its lighted walls made to look like craggy mountains of glowing alabaster. I could spend all day looking around -- especially at the Dale Chihuly glass sculpture in the mall, which must have cost at least a half-million dollars. It’s worth a trip, even if you don’t gamble. M.A.K.
