So I stumbled across this bonkers hotel while surfing for coolness. It’s the Yas Hotel in Abu Dhabi, U.A.E. and it is crazy cool. Built half on land, half on water with access to the marina. The shell of the hotel is created to resemble the tossing of a fishing net, and the LED colour display is truly impressive. It encompasses contemporary style rooms, 14 restaurants & lounges, 10 treatment room spa and multiple rooftop pools.

This is an installation that artist Leo Villareal created for the National Gallery of Art. Multiverse, the name of the installation, spans a 200 foot walkway running from the east to west concourse of the buildings. This installation consists of 41,000 programmed LED lights. This installation by Villareal started in September of 2008 and will run up until November of 2009 at the NGA.

However, if you don’t get to catch a glimpse of this in person, maybe you could check out one of his many pieces of work that exist all over the US and the globe for that matter.

Images from the NGA website of the installation in action

Images by Min Batstone

The video below is just some background into the logistics of how Villareal gets these installations to work. I definitely encourage you to check out his personal website too, tons of projects featured there, even a proposed project for an installation to scale the Lotte Super Tower building in Seoul, Korea.

Check out the high res video Pattern Recognition, where Leo talks about his work.