Boulder, Colorado - M. Gerwing Architects blog posts for M. Gerwing Architects
architect boulder
As I mentioned in a previous post, I have broken the houses down into three gross categories - Usonian, Organic, and Regional Modernist. These are of course just broad labels and no architect’s work can be so easily organized. These categories are certainly not meant to be reductionist but rather my way of thinking about Haertling’s intentions as much as his completed works.
Another in a series of posts of some of the remarkable architects that were working in Boulder, Colorado in the 1960s. This was a particularly fruitful time for questioning the received notions of residential design and Boulder's building boom allowed some of the more talented local architects to experiment with new forms, materials and most notably, new sets of relationships between the house and landscape.
I recently took a short trip to a series of amazing Native American settlement sites in south Colorado and Utah. Mesa Verde National Park is the more established, better known, site, located just outside of Cortez, Colorado. This is the location of the iconic cliff dwellings, dramatic masonry construction tucked under massive sandstone overhaning cliffs
Most of the smaller towns that I passed through on a recent road trip had their version of the local movie palace. And most were closed down along with the rest of the storefronts along the main street. The emptiness of middle America is remarkable and so sad. We all hear the statistics about the growth of the larger cities and the gradual emigration away from small towns. But something about the desolate marque of the old movie theatre strikes me as the most melancholy of the all the main street ghosts.
For many years, I have been taking trips to the San Luis Valley in southern Colorado. This area feels very different from either the Front Range or the Western Slope and is marked by tiny settlements and the vase expanse of the wide valley. Of particular interest to me are the simple chapels and churches, dotted across the landscape, some lovingly cared for, others abandoned.
