What if your job was to create something no one had ever seen before? Not just new, but completely unprecedented. That was the charge Steve and Elaine Wynn gave Roger Thomas when designing Wynn Las Vegas, and it changed everything.

Roger Thomas is the legendary designer behind Bellagio, Wynn, and Encore—spaces that redefined luxury in America. For 40 years, he partnered exclusively with Steve and Elaine Wynn to create resort destinations that feel less like hotels and more like living inside the best movie of your life. Roger calls his approach EVOC architecture—evocative architecture—where every design decision starts with a question: How will this make the guest feel?

Roger talks about inventing an entirely new design vocabulary because nothing in the marketplace could be used if it had been seen before. He explains how he and his team would walk into design meetings asking: How do we create drama? Romance? Surprise? Joy? And then work backwards from emotion to materiality, using female curves for romance, high contrast for drama, and Matisse's palette for pure joy.

But the most powerful part of Roger's story isn't about color theory or custom chandeliers. It's about authenticity. Roger opens up about coming out in his late thirties, quitting drinking, and realizing that surviving his greatest fear gave him the courage to take creative risks he'd never taken before. When he stopped hiding who he was, he stopped playing it safe in his work. That's when the real genius emerged.

Roger wraps with his famous sketchbooks—decades of observations, color combinations, and inventions that he draws back on when tasked with the impossible. And he shares what's next: helping build the Las Vegas Museum of Art, a project 45 years in the making.

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