Brinkerhoff, Donald Carl, 1930-
Description
Don Brinkerhoff of Lifescapes International designed features of Las Vegas casinos such as the Mirage volcano, the Bellagio conservatory, the Wynn Las Vegas mountain, the Encore Casino gardens, and the surroundings of the Welcome to Las Vegas sign on the Las Vegas Strip. He grew up in the southern California suburb of El Monte. Don earned a degree in ornamental horticulture at California Polytechnic, but he felt unschooled in the arts, so he took his wife and four children to Europe for two years and affiliated with the American Academy in Rome and worked for The Architexts' Collaborative in Greece. Next Don worked with a local landscape architect in Hawaii for six months. In 1968 Don returned to California and opened his Newport Beach, Orange County office. His first hotel-casino project was a Sun City, South Africa golf course condominium project. Joel Bergman invited him to be one of the three candidate landscape architects to work with Steve Wynn on the Mirage hotel-casino in Las Vegas. Although he works on projects worldwide, Don and his daughter Julie both say that "Las Vegas has totally changed our lives."
