When Denver began serious planning last year for a $378 million justice center, Mayor John Hickenlooper articulated a bold vision for a complex that would cement the city’s place as an international architectural center.
“What we’re looking for are architects who can take their genius and blend that into the context of the Golden Triangle and work with the city to create something of enduring significance,” he said in November.
But instead of anything of enduring significance, it appears those words have turned out to be empty rhetoric. The city is destined for an architectural product that is little more than ho-hum.
Ten months after Steven Holl was selected as the design architect for the complex’s $127 million courthouse after an international competition, city officials disclosed Wednesday that the New York designer pulled out of the project for reasons that remain unclear.
It is hard to view this startling development as anything but a black eye on Hickenlooper’s legacy and a slap in the face for a city trying to establish an image as a nationally known cultural center and nexus of creativity.
Making things even worse is the timing. The announcement comes as top art and architectural critics and professionals from around the world are in town for the Denver Art Museum’s unveiling of its breathtaking $90.5 million addition by Daniel Libeskind.
The story line was supposed to be that the addition was the latest milestone in a series of buildings in the city by major world architects – none more important than Holl, named by Time magazine in 2001 as America’s best architect.
As anyone who has traveled to other American cities knows, the architecture of most courthouses and jails, at least those of the past 50 years or so, is mediocre at best and downright dreary at worst.
A major part of the problem is picking architects the same way a city might hire a garbage collector – setting a budget and simply choosing the lowest bidder with little or no regard to the quality of the aesthetic result.
While not the first city to try something new, it was still little short of radical when Hickenlooper proposed an international competition for the city’s justice center, modeling it after the process that resulted in Libeskind’s hiring for the art museum addition.
The process resulted in five top-tier finalists for the courthouse, the project’s centerpiece. Perhaps following the art museum’s example, the selection committee picked Holl, probably the most unorthodox and experimental of the group.
At the time, the decision was hailed as visionary both inside and outside Denver. In retrospect, perhaps the committee should have gone with a finalist of similar stature but possessing more proven ability to handle the financial challenges of large-scale civic projects.
Early hints of trouble came in May during a Holl interview with The Post, when he seemed to question whether the project’s budget was big enough. Now, it appears the architect’s inability to create a building of the quality he wanted for the price was, indeed, a major factor in his resignation.
It would have seemed natural at this point to turn to the competition’s runner-up. But apparently, in a matter of logistics over legacy, the project is so far along that the city cannot afford to start over without significantly increasing its cost.
Instead, the responsibility for the entire project has been assigned to Holl’s local partner, klipp. Although I hope I’m wrong, what will likely result is a good but hardly world-class structure – something akin to the Wellington E. Webb Building.
“At a certain point,” said Hickenlooper in a prepared statement, “one has to do all one can to come in on-time and on-budget with a building that delivers the functionality voters were promised.”
It is sad that what started out with such promise seems destined to end on such an inauspicious note. Rather than the accolades the city sought, Holl’s departure headlined the news on one of the Internet’s busiest architecture websites, archnewsnow.com Thursday.
The lesson of this episode is not that the city should avoid such innovative approaches to picking architects. After this blow to its national standing, the city needs great architecture more than ever.
Unfortunately, it likely will be a long time before such an important public project comes along again.
Fine arts critic Kyle MacMillan can be reached at 303-954-1675 or at kmacmillan@denverpost.com.
