Each year Colorado Preservation Inc identifies a number of interesting and threatened buildings across the state. This year, prominent on the list, was a collective entry - the older advertising signs along Denver's Colfax Avenue.
Bryant Webster Elementary School, Denver
On the heels of a post about the amazing masonry of the Mullen Building, designed by Temple Hoyne Buell in 1933, I discovered an even more spectacular brick building that takes masonry construction and design to places I have never quite seen before.
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Charles Deaton's Englewood Bank
The curving concrete forms are mollusk-like, carefully opening up at the entry and displaying its protective shell along the street. The building is tough and secure and in that defensiveness it continues that tradition of creating a series of forms that clearly demonstrate the security and safety of the vault contained within.
Colfax Avenue, signs of western journey
M. Gerwing Architects anniversary
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M. Gerwing Architects has been in existence for six years as of April 1st. No foolin'. In that time we have executed a number of interesting projects, ones that benefited from that remarkable alchemy of open-minded clients, intriguing sites and managed budgets.
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(Photos of projects by Boulder architect M. Gerwing Architects) Of course, along the way, like most practices, we have seen a few projects that did not get built. This is sometimes due to the vagaries of the national economy, sometimes a change of mind on the client's part, but most often it is evidence of never really finding the proper alignment of a property owner's goals and their budget. Nine times out of ten we can identify this within the first week or so of a project, but at times it is more elusive and only reveals itself further down the line.
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So while I am proud of our achievements over the last six years, it is difficult for me to simply shake off the vision of the projects that might have been.
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It is however in the nature of architects to look to the future. We are charged with imagining a thing-yet-to-be, a vision of not just a building, but the lives lived within it, the human drama that our buildings set the scene, draw out the landscape, create the stage for the action to ensue.
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