For the design of the Marketplace at SugarHouse Casino (now Rivers Casino) in Philadelphia, DMAC Architecture was inspired by the city's history to create a combination of four restaurants that revolve around a central dining space. Inherent in the streets of Philadelphia is a history that inspired DMAC to design an installation that would both serve as a cultural marker and as an architectural feature. Ol’ Glory is a reinterpretation of Betsy Ross’ Flag in the city where it was first created. In addition, this installation acts as an acoustical wall, lowering the reverberation in the Marketplace through the brick and wood material properties.
Ol’ Glory is composed of 4,550 dowels manually cut by DMAC’s design team into 50 different lengths. The dowels were then, one by one, dipped in buckets of colored stain, and tumbled in a concrete mixer through a process that weathered them. Each one of the 4,550 dowels was installed individually into a 20-foot tall wall made of roughly 300 acoustical bricks. Normally installed with the flat side exposed, DMAC instead turned the bricks ninety degrees to expose circular perforations. These perforations became the support and foundation for the dowels. Once installed, the dowels formed an undulating Betsy Ross Flag. Hundreds of hours of intense teamwork transformed simple dowel rods into an activated element within this casino.
Material Used :
1. Illinois Brick - 9.5” tall Acoustical Bricks set in sailor courses
2. 1-1/4” diameter poplar dowels
3. Red, white, and blue wood stain weathered in a concrete mixer
