This article was originally published in The Denver Post on December 19, 2000.
An enclosed glass walkway across West 13th Avenue would provide
a dramatic link between the Denver Art Museum and the $62.5
million addition to the south, according to plans revealed by
Berlin architect Daniel Libeskind.
The walkway would attach to the second floor of the museum’s
1971 building by Italian architect Gio Ponti, opening into what is
now a gallery housing the museum’s Northwest Indian holdings. This
concept would take advantage of an almost-invisible existing
portal used to install the room’s massive totems.
The airy 33-foot-tall gallery, which has open stairways to
the first and third floors, would be transformed into an atrium
lobby and become the public entryway into that part of the new
complex. The outside museum entrance would be shifted to the east
side of the addition.
“As you move through this light-filled corridor into the Gio
Ponti building in what are probably the most beautiful public
spaces in the building,” director Lewis Sharp said, “it really
brings the Ponti alive in a way that people approaching and
entering now have never been able to experience.”
The walkway was revealed as Libeskind, who was chosen in July
to oversee the project after an international search, and the
other participants in the project outlined the proposed layout of
a new museum complex.
Denver voters approved a $62.5 million bond issue in November
1999 for the project, and museum trustees pledged another $50
million for an operations and programming endowment. According to
a new timetable released during the press conference, construction
is expected to be completed in the spring of 2005.
Efforts are now shifting to determining what form the
146,000-square-foot addition will take and how space inside will
be allotted. Libeskind said that an overall design should be
announced by February.
The structure is expected to house additional galleries for
temporary exhibitions and parts of the permanent collection, as
well as spaces for a new restaurant, museum shop and educational
activities.
Hints of how the new building might look were visible as part
of a site model revealed by museum officials. It appeared as a
sprawling building of juxtaposing and jutting angles and planes.
The highest peak of the addition would be 130 feet, about the
same height as the existing building. Libeskind said architects
are considering a combination of titanium panels and local stone
for the exterior.
“I don’t consider it just from one point of view,” Lebeskind
said. “The entire massing of it is not a two-dimensional exercise.
But it’s to develop really a three-dimensional idea with its
height, with its dramatic vistas, with its framed views.”
Despite the seeming complexity of the design and expense of
such elements as the titanium panels, Libeskind said it could be
built within budget.
“Just because you build a box,” he said, “doesn’t make it any
cheaper. Most of the boxes are more expensive.”
To the southeast of the addition on a block bounded by 12th
Avenue, 13th Avenue, Bannock Street and Broadway would be a
$14-million parking garage. The five-story structure funded by
private donations, city bonds and other city financing, would
contain 1,000 spaces, half of which are to be assigned to the
Denver Public Library.
Also being considered is the relocation of art museum
offices into a structure along one side of the parking garage. If
this concept goes forward, the museum would sell its current
two-story office building at 414 14th St.
Construction of the addition and the parking garage will not
necessitate tearing down any existing buildings on the block. But
the city is in discussions with the owner of the Ilios restaurant
building at 1201 Broadway for possible development on that corner.
“Cities are living entities,” Libeskind said. “That’s part of
the fun of design in a living context. It’s much more interesting
than an empty site that is an island off to itself.”
The addition and the parking garage are arrayed on a series
of diagonals, which are designed to relate to the existing Ponti
building and the Michael Graves-designed Denver Public Library to
the northeast.
“It’s about flowering,” Libeskind said. “Flowers, when they
flower, flower diagonally. They don’t flower vertically or
horizontally. They flare. It’s about opening the space, and it’s
about opening to the different perspectives.”
The plan preserves the north-south axis that is established
by the design of Civic Center. Viewers looking southward from
Colfax Avenue through the park and museum complex would have an
uninterrupted line of sight along Acoma Street.
