Lake|Flato and Shears Adkins Rockmore have broken ground on the University of Denver's new Burwell Center for Career Achievement. Designed as a campus hub for the university, the project was made to be a gathering place for the extended DU community. Sited at a key nexus between the campus's traditional core and its growing urban edge, the new 23,000 square foot center combines student career development with alumni engagement and programming.
Artist David Louf, aka Mr. June, has earned a reputation for creating striking urban art, most recently using three-dimensional murals that play off architectural elements. As Colossal reports, within the last year Mr. June's geometric abstractions have become increasingly architectural as they aim to challenge viewer’s perceptions. Producing work since 1985, Mr. June recently completed a 130-foot diameter dome in North Carolina and a 3D mural for Urban Nation in Berlin.
Proposed architectural rendering of an aerial view of the North Building at dusk. Image Courtesy of Fentress Architects and Machado Silvetti
The Denver Art Museum (DAM) has announced that a $12 million gift from Anna and John J. Sie will support the construction of a new welcome center at the museum’s Gio Ponti-designed North Building.
Paying homage to the shapes and volumes of the existing building, the new construction—by Machado Silvetti and Fentress Architects—aims to enhance the museum campus’ connection to the Golden Triangle neighborhood, as well as to improve visitor navigation and amenities.
Screen shot from Cristobal Palma's documentation of Denver's Biennial of the Americas 2013 exhibition. Click the image to view.
The City of Denver has launched “Imagine 2020,” a pro-arts cultural plan that will pave the way for more city-wide “art opportunities” over the next seven years. According to the Denver Post, this initiative will include the revision of “plans, permits and codes” to allow for more installations, offer small micro-art grants for residents and neighborhoods, and establish large public gathering places throughout the city. You can learn more, here.
Seattle’s Olson Kundig Architects has been tapped to design The Kirkland’s new headquarters in downtown Denver, just a block from Daniel Libeskind’s Denver Art Museum and Allied Works’ Clyfford Still Museum. The commission, which is expected to cost “tens of millions,” will double the museum’s gallery space and be used to display Colorado’s largest repository of art that includes a collection of 15,000 objects by Frank Lloyd Wright, Frank Gehry, Andy Warhol, Eero Saarinen, Philip Johnson and Mies van der Rohe.
Colorado’s Biennial of the Americas has invited artists and architects from across the Americas to participate in the second edition of Draft Urbanism: a citywide exhibition that examines the evolving relationship we have with our cities. This year, four architects - plan:b arquitectos (Colombia), Pezo von Ellrichshausen (Chile),June14 Meyer-Grohbrügge&Chermayeff (New York/Berlin), and Alex Schweder(New York) - were commissioned to each design and build a large-scale installation that address site-specific urban challenges and key planning issues presently facing downtown Denver.
With urban challenges ranging from Denver’s over abundance of surface parking lots to the effects of an 8-lane thoroughfare that splits the downtown core, these four installations aim to portray a deep understanding of the city’s history while proposing innovative ways in which art can address our urban future.
Read on to learn about the installations and view a short film for each by Cristobal Palma.
