This building was funded by the Keep Memory Alive (KMA) charitable foundation, founded by Las Vegas-based entrepreneur Larry Ruvo, who began supporting medical research in neuropsychiatric diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Huntington's, after his father Lou Ruvo passed away from Alzheimer's disease. The new center with its appearance should attract the attention of the public - and, thus, the financial resources necessary to solve this most important problem of modern medicine.
The building is located in the administrative (and "historical") center of the city, deserted and of little interest in comparison with the casino area - but there, thanks to the wide streets and low building density, it is noticeable from afar. The building consists of two parts that remind all critics of the cerebral hemispheres - in terms of the differences between their functions. Consisting of a "stack" of slightly offset white rectangular blocks, the building with laboratories, offices and patient rooms is contrasted with the steel-wrapped volume of the Life Activity Center, a hall for holding social events (as well as for renting for the same purpose, which should bring the Center a stable income). Its space is filled with sunlight penetrating through many windows, and the curved outlines look equally bizarre both inside and out.
Despite the almost contemptuous indifference with which Frank Gehry treats "green" architecture, there are not so few environmental details in this project of his. Both buildings of the building are oriented to the north, and the courtyard between them is protected from the scorching Nevada sun by a pergola. All windows are triple-glazed and can be closed with blinds at any time, the roof of the laboratory building is painted white, and the cooling system is automatically turned off when there is no one in the building; most of the luminaires are LED. Local materials were used during the construction, and exclusively desert plants were used in the landscape design of the surrounding area to save water for irrigation.
