When Stephen Holl abruptly resigned in October as design architect of Denver’s $127 million courthouse and klipp took his place, the Denver-based firm faced a barrage of huge, immediate challenges.
Not only did it have to overcome the firestorm of controversy that Holl’s departure ignited, it also had to try to live up to the towering expectations fueled by Denver’s selection of one of the world’s top architects for the job.
If that wasn’t enough, klipp had to start from scratch and conceive a design on a nearly impossible time-table. All the time put in while Holl headed the project was lost, yet the construction schedule could not be altered.
But klipp persevered. The firm has finished the essential overall design of the five-story, 315,000-square-foot building, the most prominent of the three structures in Denver’s planned $378 million justice center.
And Brian Klipp, the firm’s founding principal, believes its conception succeeds aesthetically and functionally, and fits into the complicated urban context surrounding the structure.
“I think this building will hold itself against any building in the country,” he said. “I think it’s that good. But will anybody else think that? I don’t have any expectations for that.”
The long, rectangular building runs nearly the length of a block along Fox Street between West Colfax and West 14th avenues. It is aligned along what the architects describe as a bar, with the courthouse’s functions reflected in its massing and structure.
“It is not a very complicated building,” said Keat Tan, the project’s lead designer. “It’s simple. It’s a building that’s easily understandable. When you enter the building, the plans are laid out very clearly and succinctly.”
Running down the middle of the structure will be a core of 35 city, juvenile and district courtrooms (six are being left undeveloped for budgetary reasons), eight or so per floor. Few other courthouses in the country will have such a mix of justice proceedings in one structure.
Along the west facade will be judges’ offices, with views to the mountains. The east will be devoted to public functions and support offices.
Inserted into the east side will be a diamond-shaped two-story structure containing the jury assembly room, plus a patio cafe in the southeast corner.
Wrapping around this appendage and folded along the entire east facade will be the building’s most spectacular and distinctive feature – a graceful, slightly sloped glass-curtain wall that will look as though it is peeling from the main structure.
It will face onto an oval plaza, a kind of enclosed civic space on Elati Street between the courthouse and the detention center to the east.
“We wanted to basically embrace that space and start to contain it with the building, so the shaping of the folded-glass wall is all about this urban space and all about capturing the Tremont (Street) axis (angled to the north),” Klipp said.
The wall will serve as a metaphor for the ideal of transparency of justice, allowing passersby to view people entering and exiting courtrooms. Its eastern siting responds to the preponderence of the building’s activity taking place in the morning when jurors arrive.
Most of the building’s exterior will be sheathed in a light limestone veneer with darker granite accents around the base. In addition, some terra cotta will be used to help animate the more-solid west facade.
Unlike the detention center, overseen by Hartman-Cox Architects of Washington, D.C., which hews to a neoclassical style, klipp sought a look that is neither radically vanguard nor traditional. Brian Klipp calls the style “rational modernism.”
“There were real discussions about should this building be more about the classical nature of the Civic Center district, and I felt strongly that it should not be,” Klipp said. “I felt strongly that it should really be a modern building.
“This building should talk about what is going on in the city and the culture of Denver in the 21st century.”
At the same time, he believes it embodies what he calls an “urbanistic” design, one that fits into its immediate environment, as well as the broader urban context, including the historic Civic Center to the east and an eclectic downtown core to the north.
Kin DuBois, the project’s principal-in-charge, expects the building to receive a certification for environmental sustainability from the U.S. Green Building Council.
While the courthouse’s east appendange will have a prominent green roof – literally because it will be covered with plants – DuBois said many of the building’s environmentally friendly attributes, ranging from energy-efficient glass to the recyling of 40 percent of the construction waste, will not be readily apparent.
Although klipp worked under Holl as the local architect of record, it set aside his ideas and began afresh. Tan, who joined the project only after Holl’s departure, said the firms has taken completely its own approach.
“It’s totally, totally different,” Tan said. “There’s no resemblance at all.”
The project’s tight schedule has forced the design team to work seven days a week, often 12-14 hours a day. Klipp even recalls waking up at night with ideas for the courthouse swirling in his head.
“It was the worst and best,” he said. “I think you do your best work under pressure. I think you do your best work when it’s all-consuming. We had very little time, and, in fact, most people would think it was impossible.”
Founded in 1979, klipp has worked on many major projects in Denver, including a collaboration with internationally known architect Michael Graves on the expansion and overhaul of the Denver Central Library and design of the Hyatt Regency Denver at Colorado Convention Center.
But this building is arguably its most significant – one that should go far in determining Klipp’s architectural legacy and that of his firm.
“Everything we do with our clients is intensely important,” he said, “but there is nothing that we have done that will be judged as harshly and that will have a more lasting influence as a building in Denver than a courthouse building within the Civic Center district. What could be more demanding than that?”
Fine arts critic Kyle MacMillan can be reached at 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com.
