space

parking lot 02

As we develop a project we go through a lot of drawings.  Elevations, plans, and details that all describe what materials are where and how they come together.  What we have to try not to loose in this process is the original ideas of the project that are usually more about space than the things that contain it.

I believe architecture is fundamentally about making space.  We compose bricks and steel, wood and dozens of other materials to make a building, but what we are primarily doing is creating space.  Images of architecture tend to highlight materials, colors and patterns and rarely do a good job of depicting the sense of space that is contained.  Imagining, shaping and coaxing that space is a strangely abstract and yet oddly physical task for an architect.  Although space is in a sense the negative of the container, I think for me it has a feel, almost a taste and smell, that I can get hold of, that is separate from the walls and floors, ceilings and windows.

parking lot 01

Johnson's Corner - On The Road

"It was beautiful in Longmont.  Under a tremendous old tree was a bed of green lawn-grass belonging to a gas station.  I asked the the attendant if I could sleep there, and he said sure; so I stretched out a wool shirt, laid my face flat on it, with an elbow out, and with one eye cocked at the snowy Rockies in the hot sun for just a moment.   I fell asleep for two delicious hours, the only discomfort being an occasional Colorado ant.  And here I am in Colorado!  I kept thinking gleefully. Damn! damn! damn! I'm making it! And after a refreshing sleep filled with cobwebby dreams of my past life in the East I got up, washed in the station men's room, and strode off, fit and slick as a fiddle, and got me a rich thick milkshake at the roadhouse to put some freeze in my hot, tormented stomach."

Jack Kerouac, On The Road

The gas station with the lawn was Johnson's Corner.  This is not the same cinnamon-roll-laden Johnson's Corner truck stop on I-25 outside of Loveland, but the cast concrete art deco inspired filling station that faced demolition in 2002.  As it was threatened because of road expansion, the building was moved to its current location on the edge of the new urbanist community of Prospect just south of Longmont.

As you can see, though not demolished, the building was preserved but not renovated and it is slowly falling apart inside its protective fence.  The plans are to create a small cafe and hopefully, a small patch of lawn-grass.

Moving a building to save it is a dubious proposition at best and especially so if the move requires as much demolition as this one did.  Generally, removing a structure from its context also means that it is no longer eligible for National Register status as well as some much-needed federal grants for renovation.  I hope that funds are found soon and this building can find a new use and it does not suffer the same fate as the Boulder Depot which has moved twice and is still waiting for some new use to bring it back to useful life.

Tahona Restaurant, Boulder, Colorado

currently under construction This project consists of the renovation of an exisitng restaurant on Pearl Street in Boulder, Colorado.  The existing restaurant interior was redesigned to accommodate better seating and the nightly shift of the venue from a sit-down restaurant to a nightclub.

We modeled the project extensively to try out different concepts with the space as both a restaurant and a nightclub, changing the venue's occupancy from 30 to almost 100 people.

currently under construction

Architect: M. Gerwing Architects

Project Architect: Mark Gerwing

Fourmile Fire, one year later

A year ago today, the Fourmile Fire was raging in the foothills just west of Boulder.  It started on Labor Day and I was in the studio, working, with the door to the balcony open when I started to smell smoke.  That first hint of smoke grew and when I finally went out on the balcony and looked west, a huge plume of smoke was rising up and beginning to drift into town.  Over the next couple of days, the smoke filled the studio as it did most of Boulder, its acrid presence pervading every nook and cranny.

A year later, we are building a new house for a couple who lost their house.  They have wrangled with their insurance company over the course of these many months and construction only started in earnest a few months ago.  As we are seeing their house go up, the news of many hundreds of homes lost to an ongoing fire down around Austin, Texas is on the news.

Maybe it is the dryness and heat of global warming, or the increased pressure on the urban/wilderness interface, or just a fluke, but these fires seem to be growing in number and intensity.  As the east coast was just pounded by Irene, it strikes me that wildfire is our natural disaster to deal with, like every region has to grapple with their own potential for disaster.  All those small miner's cabins made of stone with tin sheeting for roofs begin to look pretty good compared to the popular image of Western architecture with its exposed timbers and log siding.

This new house, though held aloft by heavy timber beams, is largely inflammable from the exterior and surrounded by hardscaped terraces and courtyard. All these efforts might not have prevented the intense heat of the fire from taking the house, but anything less seems a bit foolhardy at this point.

Loveland, Colorado

A bit north of Boulder is the lovely town of Loveland, Colorado.  I have often driven through town heading to some local fishing rivers and have recently begun stopping off in town.  The downtown area is a remarkable collection of small town commercial buildings, some renovated, some in bad shape, many empty.  We all have some reliably American nostalgia for "small towns" and that knee-jerk romanticism often blinds us to the very really quality of design of these places.  We tend to see the picture postcard version, with kids on bikes and the local ice cream shop.  Rather than simply driving through and "admiring" but not engaging, I would encourage everyone to actually walk the streets and see and feel the simple design genius embedded in this places.

These commercial buildings are significantly more complex than they seem at first.  The usual relationship of store front, with its lower panel, shop windows and transom windows are surmounted by heavy masonry with punched openings.  But these openings lend an architectonic quality to the building with clearly delineated sills and lintels.  The building is usually topped off with some kind of cornice, completing the building against the sky.  Those simple relationships are so much richer and simultaneously simpler than so many modern commercial buildings or worse yet, the bad pastiche contemporary buildings that try to replicate this pattern without careful study.

Loveland is also home to the Feed & Grain building, which I wrote about in a previous post.

30th and Glenarm, Five Points, Denver

30th and Glenarm is an 8-unit condominium project located in Denver's Five Points neighborhood and developed for the non-profit Northeast Denver Housing Center.  Initiated by a national competition sponsored by the Northeast Denver Housing Center and the American Institute of Architects, the project was developed from the first place award winning entry by Mark Gerwing.

Located on a formerly single-family lot, this project brought needed density to the neighborhood and helped spur the renaissance of the neighborhood.

Consisting of one handicap accessible unit and 7 double-story units, the project is situated over a secured parking lot and sits at the intersection of commercial and residential streets.  The east side of the project, the short side, is located along Glenarm Street and the design echoes the smaller single family houses down the block.  Across the street from the long side of the project, the 30th Street side, is a large brick commercial building and the design takes cues from that building.

Competition design by Mark Gerwing

Designed as Principal at Arcadea, Inc.

Mark Gerwing, Project Architect