First Casino Odesa | YOD Group

First Casino is the new big casino, based in Gagarin Hotel in Odesa. It offers different kinds of gambling: roulette, various card games, and slot machines.
The concept of the interior came from the name of the venue – First. The main accents of the space are statues of skeletons of a T-Rex and a prehistoric reptile as the first big predators that inhabited our planet tens of millions of years ago. Both figures are 3D printed. The T-Rex sculpture has the size of a real creature used to be – it is more than 3 meters high and 8 meters long. What do the prehistoric lizards and the modern gamblers hold in common? They share the passion in anticipation of the big loot.

We created an installation from 2021 glass jelly-fishes on the ceiling in the largest hall of the casino as a tribute of the seaside city Odesa. Multiple round transparent plates shape a wave, which is illuminated with rays of turquoise-colored light. That is how we got the unique shade of blue that you can see nowhere but in a quiet bay next to the shore.

Especially for First Casino, we have created a unique carpet pattern. It contains an abstract graphic with the flowing of colors and dynamic effects. It impacts the emotional state of the visitors and provokes some excitement.

First Casino in Odesa consists of a sizable general hall and 3 separate halls: Gold, Shine, Black. They are unrelated in colors and also have different sets of gambling. The black one has the calmest interior, which is specially designed for VIP clients.
The main challenge of the project was to reach the balance between the gambling vibe and our desire to design a discreet and even aristocratic space. The point is that the gambling desks and the slot machines have a rich design that already contains different colors. We aimed to create a background that can balance such a brightness. We chose dark colors from brownish and black color pallets with blue accents and gold details.

– We had to master a new field to create the design of our first casino. It has something in common with the design of a restaurant but different zoning rules and different space goals. The gambling venue provides each guest with a sense of celebration, some adrenaline and makes them experience the emotional state that is close to the state of altered consciousness. Our work on the First Casino started from the research. We attended the biggest casinos in Las Vegas and Miami. We walked through dozens of gambling venues, the design of which is like the explosion of fireworks. Everything there is bright, glowing, and beaming. Then we decided to keep the DNA of gambling and remove all superfluous. We designed for First Casino its free-standing aesthetics. It is mature, restrained, and bourgeois to some extent. – Dmytro Bonesko, the cofounder of YOD Group said.