Architect Jeffrey Sheppard says new housing in downtown Denver pales in comparison to what is being built in other cities, such as this apartment complex in Copenhagen, Denmark. (Provided by Roth Sheppard Architects)
Re: “Denver is a great city, so why the bad buildings?,” April 5 Perspective article.
One of Denver’s most reputable architects, Jeffrey Sheppard of Roth Sheppard Architects, wrote an interesting piece last Sunday on Denver’s latest multi-residential architecture in which he identified the genre as “banal, five-story apartment boxes.”
Like most architecture, it reflects the thinking which defines the building type. The thinking which causes these buildings is short-term, high-return investments. They are designed to make money fast by accumulating rents and tax discounts, and a quick turnover once the tax deductions for depreciation have shrunk short of delirious profits. They are designed to serve nomads who will live in them for a few years and then leave to start their adult lives. They do not attach anyone to anything. They create the precise community which incumbent politicians adore: people who vote in small numbers and care little for their neighborhoods.
I call the architecture “pre-tenement.”
Tom Morris,Denver
This letter was published in the April 12 edition.
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