FLORAL ARTISTRY
Vibrant, celebratory flowers make Wynn Macau guests feel as if they’ve arrived at a party in progress.
Floral design at Wynn Macau and Encore is about so much more than décor. Selecting and placing colorful perennials and seasonal blooms at the resorts is a serious design consideration. “We’re not merely using them to have a flower arrangement in the lobby,” says Roger Thomas, Vice President of Design for Wynn Design and Development. “We’re so passionate about them that they take center stage. They’re what we talk about in the very beginning of a new project. Everybody who is involved in flowers in the Wynn projects shares that.” In Macau, that includes Thomas, floral directors Meibo Woo and Samantha Tang, and Steve Wynn himself, who is practically a patron of the floral arts. “The discussion of floral is always part of the initial concept,” Thomas explains. “Scale is really important in achieving the kinds of floral expressions we’re trying to achieve, so that’s always part of the floral concept. And then we also design floral expressions that are of heroic scale, so we have to devise ways that don’t really exist to create those.” Whether monumental or intimate, floral art can be seen throughout Wynn Macau and Encore, from the restaurants to the guest rooms. Walk into the lobby of the Wynn Club and you’ll be greeted by the kind of artistry the Wynn team strives for: an entire wall of flowers behind the reception desk. The design is sculptural, the color palette reflecting Wynn Design’s preference for bright oranges, lime greens, fuchsia pinks, and periwinkle blues. The goal was to create something celebratory, says Thomas, letting guests feel as if “they’ve arrived at a party in progress.” “We mirrored the wall and spent six months developing a method of putting fresh flowers in the wall in the shapes and outline of flowers,” he
explains, listing roses, hydrangeas, and peonies as some of the fresh flowers populating the Wynn Club Lobby. “We always want the very best flowers that are growing at the moment, so we focus on a vocabulary of color that takes into account the different times of year when different kinds of flowers are available. That means our floral designs are going to be changing with the seasons and appropriate to the season, so as guests return, they get a different garden-of-the-season look.” Flowers invigorate a living space, serving as the vibrant, inviting soul of a room’s design. “I think when we walk into a room with something already living in it—be it flowers, animal, plant, or person—the room already has life,” Thomas says. “It’s a more receptive, more beckoning place to be. We immediately relate to the room, not as just a combination of exquisite fabrics and marbles and woods and beautiful silhouettes and lines and imagination, but as a living place.” Currently Wynn’s flower experts are applying their passion to their next project, Wynn Palace at Cotai, Macau. Floral industry superstars like Jeff Leatham and Preston Bailey have been enlisted to collaborate with Wynn Design and Development and Floral Director Jerry Sibal, while Wynn continues to cultivate relationships with top vendors locally and around the world to ensure a steady supply of the very best and widest variety of fresh flowers. But without Steve Wynn, one of floral design’s most ardent advocates, the world’s top luxury resorts might be a lot less colorful. “He reaches out consistently for the best in entertainment, the best in design, the best in everything,” says Thomas, “and always the best in flowers.”