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March 2018 \ BUILDING DIALOGUE \ 85 W ith deep roots in architecture, planning and landscape architecture, Boulder’s DTJ Design has helped lead the way for thoughtful de- velopment amid Colorado’s great outdoors for more than 50 years. A founding partner of the firm, Steve James is the J in DTJ. “The D [Bruce Downing] and T [Tom Thorpe] have since retired,” he says. “I’m the bridge of generations.” Before James came to Boulder by way of Newport Beach in 1984, DTJ had been in business as a residential-focused de- sign-build firm, Downing/Leach and Associates, since 1967. In its early years, it developed the first planned unit develop- ment in Colorado, Appleridge Park, followed by Wonderland Hills, a pioneering devel- opment for its integration with the natural landscape and its use of solar. Those two projects put the firm on the map for residential developments on the urban fringe “tucked gracefully into nature,” says James. “We’d get the special, boutique projects that had open space woven through it. “It’s just a different set of glasses we look through,” he adds. “Usually it's some sort of landscape or open-space product that nudges us to do something special.” With this integrated, landscape-centric approach as the calling card, Downing/ Leach spun off a standalone design firm in Downing, Thorpe & James in 1988. The name was later shortened to DTJ Design as it worked on such high-profile proj- ects as Anthem Colorado, FlatIron Crossing, Interlocken, and Centerra in the ’90s and 2000s. (Downing/Leach subsequently focused on construction as Wonderland Homes.) Chris Moore came to work for the firm in 1998 and became CEO in 2012. “I was attracted to DTJ because of the multidisciplinary nature of the compa- ny,” he says. “A lot of companies try to specialize in a segment of the market. By providing an integrated service, we’re trying to look at things from a holistic standpoint.” It’s about how open space influences development, and vice versa, and that means it’s critical to have planners, architects, and landscape architects on the same page to pull it off. "Virtually all of the leadership in the company wears two of those three hats,” says Director of Architecture Dave Williams, who DTJ: Integrating Open Spaces in Development for 50 Years WORDS: Eric Peterson Steve James