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Denver, Colorado
It’s like a book elegantly bound, but in a language that you can’t read, just yet
Your first view of Denver is my first view of Denver (if you don't count things like the airport and the rental car place and the drive downtown). The Civic Center Cultural Complex centers itself around three landmark buildings (with a fourth on the way), creating an all architecture start to a slideshow which otherwise promises lots (and lots) of pictures from across the American southwest of, well, rocks (but really, really nice rocks- I promise).
Anyway first up in this first picture (and in the far back center) is Italian architect Gio Ponti's original fortress, er, building for the Denver Art Museum (DAM). The building has a series of slot windows that reveal oddly cropped views from its galleries, most of which are in desperate need of a total overhaul (or at the very least some new graphics). Next up (on the right) is New Jersey architect Michael Graves' Denver Public Library. One of his more interesting designs from the outside, it sort of falls apart once you start to look around on the inside. A bit of a shame really, its interior feels more like a stale airport hotel than the world class library that you see from the exterior.
Just out of view on the left (and out of view for a few more years since construction hasn't even started yet) is Portland (Oregon) architect Brad Cloepfil's brand new Clifford Still Museum (Denver has no historical claim to Clifford Still unless you count their plan to build his museum there). The design looks interesting although I'll reserve judgment until I see it, especially considering Brad Cloepfil's recent history. He's the guy who reworked 2 Columbus Circle in New York, initially delivering promising renderings but instead delivering a building that hasn't even opened yet but is almost already universally hated.
Not to be forgotten is the big shiny pointy building on the left. More about that below.
Daniel Libeskind's addition to the Denver Art Museum (DAM) is hard to miss and hard to ignore as it lunges right over 13th Avenue and points toward downtown. Unlike the other two Libeskind museums I have visited, the flush metal panel skin works wonderfully with the oh so pointy sculptural forms. The light, reflection and shadow of the polished surfaces deepen the experience in a way that the rough metal planks of Berlin and Toronto can only dream of.
Also visible in this picture is the bridge connecting the two DAM buildings and a generally understated residential block (also designed by LIbeskind) that is pushed right up against the parking garage and helps create a nice little entry plaza to the whole complex.
This is the third Libeskind Museum I have visited, affording me the opportunity to start to see past the flashy, pointy, shiny angular forms and to start to understand what really works and what really doesn't. And while the taut metal skin works great on the outside, the galleries and public spaces on the inside are far less interesting than what you would see in Berlin or Toronto. Berlin is an appropriately difficult maze of galleries and spaces with angled columns and angled floors, while Toronto has the advantage of an interior court up against an existing building coupled with a real sectional design that surprises and reveals spaces at most every turn. The Denver Art Museum has a staircase, a few slanted walls, an ok sculpture garden and an especially boring white ceiling. Put it all together with a collection that could most generously be described as passable and after visiting the inside galleries and atriums you soon find that you just can't wait to get outside again.
The two buildings of the Denver Art Museum are surprisingly alike and work rather well together, at least on a conceptual level. Sure Gio Ponti's building looks like a prison, but LIbeskind's building isn't all that inviting either. Neither really deal with any local context, both have unusual stairs (the Ponti building's stairs have a cool retro public housing feel, a primary color accent tile scheme and wonderfully ominous acoustics- doors have the tendency to slam and echo and reverberate in a way that almost shakes your very soul, the Libeskind stairs are angled in such a way that seems to encourage visitors to fall down them), and both have prominent vertical slots (although Libeskind's slot(s) are not nearly as prevalent as Ponti's). Connecting the two buildings are a low one story annex and a flying bridge with a cafe, and as you walk between the two you definitely can tell where Libeskind's building begins and Ponti's unrenovated buildings starts. Circulation wise the second floor bridge isn't especially easy to find in either building, since both the Ponti and Libeskind interiors are not especially clear, clean or impressive- yet another commonality that forever ties the two together.
While the Libeskind building might be getting all of the press, the best new museum building in Denver is way on the other end of the 16th Street Mall, sort of near the river, sort of near the train station, sort of near the REI and just passed where that shuttle bus jumped the sidewalk and drove into a Starbucks (the big news in Denver that day). The first US building by British architect David Adjaye, the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) is hidden in a new residential development and reasonably non descript from the outside, but once you get inside you start to see the magic. The building has two floors of galleries surrounded by an exterior corridor with diffused, textured light and a vertical, skylit slot through the heart of the building. There are complex relationships all over the place and the greatness of the building needs to be seen in person to be understood (a loose translation of that last statement is that it just doesn't photograph all that well).
If you decide to visit you'll probably soon notice how the museum is expensive considering the art (not that great and not that much of it), but the building is so nice you start to forget how much you spent to get in.
Adjaye sure likes reflective glass. This is the view from the rooftop gallery with a cafe on the left, pop up clerestory monitors on the right and a small interior gallery straight ahead. Further proof that as much fun as this building was in person, it just photographs horribly.
