They say you always remember your first—your first kiss, your first alcoholic drink and, probably, your first time inside Omnia Nightclub. The 75,000-square-foot space makes for a remarkable experience, but it’s the chandelier—the 33-foot-wide, 22,000-pound metal mass with eight concentric rings moving overhead—that imprints its swirling image onto your brain. It’s as breathtaking as it is technologically astounding: futuristic and opulent and completely unforgettable.
For an undertaking that massive, it took eight designers and “at least another 40 on the manufacturing side” to create the technical behemoth, explains James Algate, VP of music for Hakkasan Group. “After conceptualization, it took about nine months to go through the design and manufacturing phases to complete the project.”
Six months after Omnia’s opening, the chandelier has taken on a celebrity of its own; partiers stand wide-eyed, snapping away for that perfect Instagrammable moment. Everyone knows about it, and it’s what each Omnia virgin wants to see once past the velvet rope.
And it’s not as easy as flipping a switch. It’s a complicated effort, ensuring this gigantic machine runs without a hitch. “The lighting effects and video on the chandelier are operated by the same team that also operates the lighting and video content throughout the rest of the venue,” Algate says, and “through the intelligent software and automation programming, one person is now capable of making sure it runs smoothly throughout each event.”
Unlike any other chandelier in Las Vegas, Omnia’s is programmed on two levels—the first a static component, “the stationary scenes or positions it can stay in,” and the second, the animation or movement. “We are able to program both the animation and static scenes, but there are infinite ways to move the chandelier by changing the speed and movement between the various scenes,” Algate says. “This allows for unlimited possibilities.”
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From below, the glowing giant looks like Santa’s spaceship lighting up, thousands of LEDs and 60 moving headlights sparkling on the different rings. Tomorrow, Omnia’s chandelier will rise, fall and rotate in a completely unique pattern, ensuring no night is ever the same. Production teams refresh content monthly, and a maintenance crew runs “checkups” daily, weekly and monthly “to ensure everything is working exactly how it was designed,” Algate says. “It is imperative for us to keep the chandelier to a strict schedule not only for safety reasons, but to ensure it runs smoothly with no malfunctions.”
I look through my own Instagram scrapbook for the picture I snapped during my first night at Omnia. “Alien invasion?” I wrote below the photo, the massive vessel bathing revelers in electric green, all staring back as if waiting to be abducted.
Somehow, as production teams work around the clock to make the chandelier shine, everything about Omnia’s grand centerpiece appears effortless. For now, it has no rival, and that’s what makes it so memorable.