Last Sunday’s New York Times had a story about Denver’s emerging urbanism, observing Denver is “not particularly known for its cutting edge architecture.” Still, we are sprouting the Daniel Libeskind-designed residences adjacent to the Fred Hamilton addition to the Denver Art Museum, as well as the Studio Completiva residences adjacent to David Adjaye’s new Museum of Contemporary Art.
A local real estate agent described Denver’s newest boomlet as part of a global trend – “people wanting to live in important architecture.”
Her statement made me wonder whether occupying name-brand architecture is as good as living with great urbanism.
Certainly, it’s easier to recognize. A building designed by a high-profile architect is expensive (upwards of $500 per square foot, The New York Times reported), prestigious and currently in demand.
Great urbanism is much tougher to recognize, far more democratic and not in great supply in Denver.
A recent tour of downtown illustrates my point.
I would categorize good urbanism as Saturday afternoon on Platte Street, just off 15th. There are shops, neighborhood bars, restaurants and hangouts and lots of people on the street.
Wazee Street in Lower Downtown is also good urbanism. The two-way traffic, parking on both sides of the street and wide sidewalks accommodate pedestrians, cars and buses. The buildings are transparent at the street, of uniform height and create a comfortable street wall of brick background buildings.
By contrast, the new Hyatt Regency Hotel on 14th Street is a nice building, great on the skyline with a clean and interesting façade, but dead at the street.
The full-block hotel across 14th Street from the Colorado Convention Center has no doors on 14th, one door halfway to 15th Street on California, a drop-off and driveway along the entire 15th Street front entrance and one door, close to 15th on Welton Street. There are no shops. There is nothing for the pedestrian, the conventioneer, the shopper or the worker to do or purchase anywhere on the full block perimeter of what should be – because of the convention center – a very active downtown location.
Why not? Because though the building is wrapped in an urban skin, the hotel’s program is entirely suburban. The building is organized to function for the automobile, the tour bus and the hotel management. No exterior access to restaurants, bars or shops means less security and more attention to efficiency than to how people might use a building. The city paid for this building. We should have demanded more than a handsome façade. We should have demanded urbanism, doors and street activity.
The great white whale emerging at the corner of Colfax and Broadway is more than a fish out of water. The Denver Newspaper Agency building is a poorly detailed derivative of the city’s new office building across the street. The white metal panels on the façade are too big, too flat and out of context at that location. Imagine the heat the building will reflect into Civic Center on a 90-degree July afternoon.
Its parking garage on Cleveland Place is a strange concrete concoction, discouraging to pedestrians despite the fact that most people coming from the 16th Street Mall to Civic Center use Cleveland Place.
The Denver Newspaper Agency exacted $700,000 from the city because the city wanted a deep setback for the sidewalk along Broadway facing Civic Center. The covered portion of the sidewalk confuses the line between public and private. Is the sidewalk truly public right-of-way or part of the lobby on the other side of the generous glass windows?
I hope the owner’s treatment of the historic Pioneer Fountain and adjacent public space is not so ambiguous.
Though the museum residences add a touch of handsome architecture to the Golden Triangle, the bridge across 14th Street, connecting the Libeskind addition to the Gio Ponti building, is an affront. The pedestrian bridge eschews the pedestrian, blocks incomparable views of the Front Range and violates the first rule of good urbanism:
Never take people off the street.
Susan Barnes-Gelt served eight years on the Denver City Council and was an aide to former Denver Mayor Federico Peña. Her column appears on alternate Sundays.
