In the College of Architecture and Planning at the University of Colorado Denver, students and faculty engage directly with our vibrant city, dynamic community, and magnificent landscape by working on real projects that make a real difference.
This design for a museum in downtown Denver responds to the surrounding context of the site at 1400 Wynkoop, as well as to the needs and philosophies of the artist Olafur Eliasson. The design reflects the tension inherent in the context, as the urban grid pushes up against the naturalness of Cherry Creek and vice versa (by bringing in organic forms juxtaposed against square blocks). The museum’s continuous, figure-eight circulation gently draws visitors in and carries them through compressed “dark” galleries on the ground floor to “light” galleries on the second, where they experience Eliasson’s range of work, from visual to installation art.