Reach for the Sky: Three Denver Building Projects Raise Expectations

The ten buildings profiled in “Building for the Future,” a list of the ten best new structures in downtown Denver, all display designs that are thoroughly of our time. Still, while they are credible examples of early 21st-century contemporary architecture, only a handful have the kind of pizzazz that makes a big impact. In fact, pizzazz is a rare commodity in the built environment of the Mile High City. Maybe all that practical denim and flannel in Denver’s history is gumming up our collective consciousness.

But a trio of upcoming projects promises to make up for some of downtown’s flamboyance deficiency. At least in the current renderings, each one displays enough zest to instantly establish the building that results as a city landmark.
First up is Populus, a 265-room hotel destined for a small, triangular lot bounded by 14th Street, Court Place and West Colfax Avenue. The hotel is being designed by Studio Gang, an up-and-coming firm in Chicago with offices also in New York, San Francisco and Paris. The team is headed by Jeanne Gang, who promotes a studio practice that stresses research, experimentation and collaboration, with diverse resources that influence the design of its buildings.

For Populus, Gang stresses the idea of Colorado-ness in the overall shape of the thirteen-story tower and in the tower’s details. Gang takes the formal language she’s using for Populus from a stand of Colorado’s aspen trees. In fact, the name Populus comes from Populus tremuloides, the tree’s Latin name. The tower will be devised as a tight cluster of light-colored, log-like elements linked side to side; these “logs” run from the ground to the roof, following the triangular boundary of the lot. Pushing the aspen metaphor further still, Gang envisions the windows as heavily shaded eyelet openings, suggestive of the black scars on aspen trunks marking the place of fallen limbs. The main level looks like it’s going to be particularly nice, with high, shaded arches shielding enormous windows into the lobby and other spaces within. There will also be a green roof of plants and outdoor decks for hotel guests.
Next in the offing is a building that’s guaranteed to be fantastic, if not downright outrageous: One River North, under construction at 3930 Blake Street in RiNo. It’s the work of MAD Architects — a Beijing-based firm with offices in Los Angeles and Rome — together with Denver’s Davis Partnership Architects.

A sixteen-story residential building, One River North will hardly blend in with its surroundings. On the west side, overlooking the railyards with unobstructed views of the mountains across the tracks, the tower will have an arcing facade mostly covered in mirrored glass-curtain wall panels accented by horizontally mounted thin metal ribs. The mirror panels will take the form of three large, irregularly shaped shards, and in the void between the separate parts there will be spaces and plants suggestive of a Rocky Mountain canyon. The void will climb up the middle of the building to a park-like roof garden planted with bushes and trees and equipped with a swimming pool. No other structure in the city has as pronounced of a biophilic component as the one projected for One River North. If it all comes together as planned, this will be the coolest building not just in RiNo, but the entire state.
Finally, there’s 1900 Lawrence. At thirty stories, it will be tall enough to take its place on Denver’s skyline, and will be particularly prominent when looking from the west to downtown. This building has been in the planning stages for a while; the first renderings were released back in 2020, but then the project was put on hold. It’s now back on, with a recent groundbreaking. The design is by Goettsch Partners, which is based in Chicago and has offices in Shanghai and Abu Dhabi. Goettsch specializes in large projects, and while its current iteration only dates to the partnership’s founding in 2005, its origins stretch back to the 1938 Chicago office of Mies van der Rohe.

When complete, 1900 Lawrence will be a vertical shaft offset at the ground by a mid-rise wing. Perched on very Miesian pilotis, the mass of the tower will rise directly above an entry porch that’s been notched out at the base. The design has a lively form that pushes and pulls, evocative of a stack of children’s building blocks piled up slightly off-kilter; it’s very similar to the handling of Goettsch’s Al Hilal Bank in Abu Dhabi. This distinctive stack will be made up of large, multi-story extensions cantilevered off the core that are adorned with a limited number of private terraces. The entire tower will be clad in mirrored glass, with metal ridges having a dominant vertical orientation and a subsidiary horizontal one. It will surely be one of the swankiest office addresses in Denver.

Populus and One River North are set to be completed in 2023, and the more substantial 1900 Lawrence in 2024. With ongoing supply-chain issues and a construction worker shortage, all three could take a little longer. But these buildings should be worth waiting for.