Boulder, Colorado - M. Gerwing Architects blog posts for M. Gerwing Architects
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San Luis chapel 03
I have finally gotten around to processing some more film from a very rewarding trip to the San Luis Valley in southern Colorado last year.
San Luis chapel 04
San Luis chapel 02
San Luis chapel 01
I will certainly be going back there again this year, later in the Spring when the heavy snows have past but before the major snowmelt swells all the local rivers and streams. I hope to have much more interesting historical and cultural info on the various locales than in the past.
Cairo map
On a narrow spit of land, at the confluence of two mighty rivers, lies ancient Cairo. Not the one in Africa, with pyramids and camels, rather the one along the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, Cairo, Illinois.
Cairo has seen better days, the 1920 population of 15,000 having dropped below 3,000 souls. Once a shipping center strategically located at the two rivers, the city later developed as a rail center, consolidating its status as a bustling nexus of commerce. During this period of prosperity, merchants and shippers built themselves grand mansions and protected them with ever-increasing levees. However, as commerce increasingly hitched a ride on trucks and roadways, ever more efficient and larger bridges were constructed across the Mississippi River, by-passing Cairo. This loss of trade and a history of violent racial interactions isolated the city and like many cities in the turbulent late 1960's lead to white flight and subsequent further loss of businesses and population. Rapid economic decline soon followed and with it came its usual fearsome playmates, crime and poverty.
Cairo mansion 02
Cairo mansion 03
Cairo now is a shell of its past former glory and the old mansions and former Custom House still haunt the city's architecture and memory. Even when restored and blessed with careful stewards, the grand houses of the wealthy businessmen only accentuate the despair of the place. Hundreds of years after the Fall of Rome, when cattle grazed in the Forum and moldering ornate capitals and pediments lay half-buried, what did the contemporary Romans imagine of their past? Were they proud of their heritage crumbling under their feet or burdened by it, unable to synthesize their current plight with the desperate melancholy of a past long since gone. And once mighty Cairo, by-passed by technology and progress, torn apart by race intolerance and violence, has to live with the mocking edifices of past glory glaring with unapproving eyes, fully restored in body but not spirit.
Cairo building
steel bridge 03
Before interstate engineers replaced our river crossings with solid, straight, under-supported super-slabs of concrete highways, spidery steel bridges carried us across the impediments to the relentless to- and fro- of an increasingly mobile society.
steel bridge 01
When you pass through the steel rib cages of these older bridges, especially the narrow, long spans, crossing a river feels like a celebration, an exciting transformation from one place to the next. The uniformity of road surface, side rails and driving surface of concrete pier bridges celebrate only the efficiency of travel, not the journey.
steel bridge 02
These bridges make a space amongst themselves, an interstitial place between here and over-there. Because the structure of the bridge is above you and around you, you don't simple glide across a river or steep valley, but you feel the suspension from gravity of that leap across space.
movie theatre 01
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.
movie theatre 03
You can almost see and hear the activity of the crowd out front, the ticket sellers booth and the couples lingering after the show.
movie theatre 02
These buildings were also the real stars of the main street. They were fantastical and showy, brash and sometimes clownish in their attempts to draw our attention, and all the more so when standing next to the somber drugstore and barbershop.
movie theatre 04
Some are still open of course. I would have loved to have seen a show at the eponymous theater in Lamar, Colorado on the eastern plains. Any movie in that place gets an extra star.
First Christian 01
As almost anyone can attest to, one of the very first buildings that most people see on arriving in Boulder is the First Christian Church on CO 36/28th Street, in southeast Boulder.
Built in 1960 and designed by Nixon and Jones, it is an excellent introduction to Boulder's great collection of late Modernist architecture.
The main sanctuary is the west-projecting prow that mimics the angled flatirons on the horizon and is clad in long strips of blue glass with a decorative, multi-colored geometric motif. The dropping site grade accentuates the projecting prow and the long, white horizontal balcony acts like a visual cantilevered beam simultaneously anchoring the building to the ground and allowing for it to soar upward.
First Christian 06
Alongside the form of the sanctuary space is a stark brick "campanile", lozenge-shaped, standing just to the east of the main entry. While I don't think this tower houses any bells, it does act as that typical vertical element of the traditional campanile, distinguishing the entry and providing a vertical counter to the horizontal impetus of the front of the building.
First Christian 03
The east side of the building is a series of low, single-story structures, an office and school. But the heart of the building clearly lies in the west sloping face.
First Christian 02
The sanctuary portion of the building has been empty for quite a few years and is suffering from some much needed delayed maintenance. The soffits are showing some damage and the brick, with its raked horizontal joints and flush vertical joints, so typical of Wright-inspired mid-century architecture, is in need of proper tuck-pointing.
First Christian 05
There are development plans afoot for much of the site, including some demolition, but retaining the sanctuary and campanile. As First Christian sits along the most-traveled entry into Boulder, thousands of folks travel past it everyday without much of a thought. Certainly the sites around this church have sprouted many buildings of ever-increasing size and articulation, diminishing the impact of the work. Nevertheless, it would be difficult to imagine Boulder without this iconic, welcoming edifice.
First Christian 04
JP front 02
We finally have some initial photos of the author and illustrator's studio we completed earlier this year.
The project consisted of the demolition of an older studio building - small and poorly constructed - and the creation of a new studio with an elevated reading loft.
JP interior 01
One of our goals of the project was to open the studio to the rear yard, infusing the space with light and landscape. The flood of reflected green light from the lush vegetation spills into the studio and manifests the nature-inspired children's books that are created within.
JP interior 02
The reading loft is a bit of a refuge, a passive space connected to, but somewhat separate from, the more active space of the studio. The cork flooring of the loft and spiral stair treads lends a delicate, warm atmosphere to the loft contrasting the radiant heated concrete floor of the studio.
JP interior 04
One of the challenges of the project was to make a largely blank wall against the street and express the studio as distinct from the existing 1890's house. The old house's porch was greatly compromised by the old studio and the new design pulls the studio away from the house, letting both the new and old construction establish a dialogue of equals.
JP front 03
The new studio has three large, high clerestory windows which act like dormers, articulating the mass of the studio and echoing the form of the mansard roof of the old house. The new exterior siding delineates the new from the old, but subtly recognizes the dimension of the mansard shingles with the syncopated rhythm of the new siding.
JP exterior siding detail, square
The new connection to the old house was a peeling open of the existing plaster to reveal the massive stone exterior wall on the interior, re-emphasizing the transition between old and new, literally framing the new with the existing.
JP interior 06
This studio is phase one of a multi-phase project that will include a new interior hall and kitchen/dining extension from the old house into the rear yard. The completion of the second phase will result in a more compact and intimately scaled courtyard space between the studio and the house, realizing a more complex relationship of live-work that is the day-to-day life of this creative couple.
This project entails a lot of the complexity of issues that we are increasingly attracted to in our work - preservation and new construction, live/work environments, interior/exterior relationships.
Designed by M. Gerwing Architects
Mark Gerwing, Project Architect
General Contractor: Cottonwood Custom Builders
Structural Engineering: Gebau, Inc.
