Page 42 —
COLORADO REAL ESTATE JOURNAL
— August 17-September 6, 2016
by John Rebchook
Even as a child, Stephen
Dynia, the architect respon-
sible for a number of award-
winning buildings in Taxi
and other buildings in RiNo,
showed promise that he
would eventually design
and reshape buildings and
space for a living.
For example, where oth-
ers would see a dining room
table, Dynia would see
the potential for the space
underneath the table.
“Forts, clubhouses. Any-
thing you could imagine
with space, give me some
blankets and pillows and I
would build it,” he said.
“I think with a child it
is how you deal with the
world spatially,” Dynia said.
“Architects are very spa-
tially sensitive. That is,
architects have the ability
to turn two dimensions into
three dimensions in their
minds,” Dynia said.
His passion for architec-
ture and design really began
to take root in high school.
During the 1970s, his high
school integrated a real
work environment with the
classroom.
Through that program,
he began working for War-
ren Platner, an architect
and furniture designer who
had worked with legendary
architects such as Raymond
Loewy, Eero Saarinen and
I.M. Pei.
“I did everything,”
recalled the 60-year-old
Dynia.
Early on, he would drive
the company van to its
projects in New York City.
Later, he became involved
in its elaborate and detailed
model making. He remem-
bers one large model of
the Windows on the World
restaurant in the World
Trade Center. That was a
50,000-square-foot restaurant
on the 107th floor, provid-
ing magnificent views from
huge windows of the skyline
of Manhattan.
“It was a very exciting
place to work,” Dynia said.
“You had access to a lot of
very creative and talented
people.”
He continued to work in
the office after high school,
saving money to attend
architectural school.
He received a scholarship
to the Rhode Island School
of Design, a better school
than he thought he could
afford.
“That is a school that
teaches architecture from an
artist’s point of view,” Dynia
said.
He had his sights set on
working in New York City.
And so he did, joining
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill,
one of the world’s largest
architectural firms, in 1984.
“That was sometimes an
adventure, but SOM really
was a firm kind of stuck in
doing things in a certain
way, which is good, in its
own way,” he said.
“But I was really taught at
the level of conceptual ideas
and the beauty of art to
make you see things differ-
ently,” Dynia said.
He worked out of SOM’s
London office for a while,
where he did some projects
in Asia.
He really didn’t want to
leave the Big Apple, though.
“It was really great when
New York was booming. It
was an exciting and interest-
ing place to be,” he said.
In one interview, he was
quoted as saying it was a
“Mad Men” environment.
“A little bit, maybe,”
Dynia said. “We were on the
11th floor of the Daily News
building and there was still
smoking at our desks. “But
we didn’t have bottles of
Scotch in our desk. At least
not at my level.”
When the recession hit
New York in the early ’90s,
there was less work for a big
firm like SOM.
He also soon discovered
that there was a corporate
hierarchy and he did not
excel at playing politics.
“What I wanted to excel
at, design, was the antithesis
of playing office politics,” he
said.
“I had a very hard idea of
figuring out what my next
move should be,” he said.
He did not want to leave
the energy and culture of
New York City. SOM, at one
point, offered him a job in
San Francisco, “But I kept
comparing other cities to
New York and they came up
short. New York was such
a crazy benchmark that if
a city did not have a the
advantage of New York, I
didn’t want to be there.”
Then, he discovered
Jackson Hole, Wyoming,
through a friend.
“It wasn’t something I
expected, but I went there
and thought it was extraor-
dinarily beautiful,” he said.
“I was mesmerized by its
beauty. It was just as excep-
tional as New York in a
natural sense, as New York
was in a built-environment
sense.”
He had skied a bit back
East, but that wasn't a driv-
ing force to his move to
Jackson Hole, after seven or
eight years at SOM.
“I’m more motivated by
the work that I do,” he said.
He didn't really think he
would stay in Jackson Hole
for very long.
He miscalculated. He still
has a thriving office there,
almost 25 years later.
But he wasn’t an immedi-
ate hit.
The rich who owned prop-
erty or vacationed in Jack-
son Hole felt they needed
a log cabin, not the type of
modern home he wanted to
design.
“In the architectural
vernacular they were log
cabins, but they were these
10,000-sf log cabins, hulking
absurdities. You had these
overly muscular log struc-
tures, instead of quaint log
cabins.”
However, Jackson Hole
did have a foothold with
modern architecture.
He was intrigued that
Mies van der Rohe, one of
the fathers of modern archi-
tecture, had designed a very
modern home at the Snake
River Ranch near Jackson
Hole in the 1930s.
“But nobody was doing
modern architecture,” 60
years later.
“They were building these
Disney-esque log cabins. A
frontier fantasy that I had no
interest in.”
The challenge was and is
to design a house that con-
nected to the landscape.
“You had people who had
paid $10 million for the land
and as an architect your job
was to have it connect to the
land while protecting the
environment,” he said.
Initially, he worked on a
lot of additions in Jackson
Hole, until he established
himself as a modern archi-
tect.
After two or three years in
Wyoming, he was hired to
design a 7,800-sf house on a
land that was breathtakingly
beautiful even by Jackson
Hole standards.
As an architect, he wanted
to take advantage of the site
to give the owner the best
views.
“In a normal site, you
might say, let’s put the
garage here. Our dilemma
was there were no bad
views. The views were
magnificent wherever you
looked.”
It was a good problem to
have.
That home was so well
received he became estab-
lished as the go-to architect
for modern homes of glass,
steel and concrete with clean
lines.
During that time, he
would often travel through
Denver.
“For one thing, Denver
had an international air-
port,” he noted.
He was designing a home
in Boulder and became more
interested in Denver.
About 10 years ago he was
introduced to Mickey and
Kyle Zeppelin, the father
and son team that developed
Taxi in RiNo.
Dynia’s first assignment in
Taxi was the Freight build-
ing, which went on to win
numerous architectural
awards.
He has since worked on
five different assignments
with the Zeppelins, includ-
ing another award-winner,
The Source building, in
RiNo.
He also is designing the
Source Hotel planned next
to The Source.
The Source, an 1880s brick
foundry that has been con-
verted into a public market
for artisans and restaurants,
has done more as a catalyst
for RiNo than even Taxi, he
believes.
“Taxi was the first, but it
was kind of an island onto
itself and self contained,”
Dynia said.
“The Source is a very pub-
lic building. It brought a lot
of people to the area who
had never heard of RiNo
and didn't really even know
where it was,” he said.
Mickey and Kyle Zeppelin
are great clients, he said.
“The Zeppelins are more
bold than a lot of other
developers, who want to
churn out safe, cookie-cutter
projects,” Dynia said.
For example, at Freight, an
industrial building re-pur-
posed as collaborative office
space, he and Kyle brain-
stormed and came up with
the idea of using garage
doors in all of the units,
not just the ones facing the
Platte River on the old load-
ing docks.
Freight also incorporates
glass panels from a hockey
rink and salvaged bowl-
ing alley floors for benches,
tables and counters.
Asked if he has spent so
much time with Mickey and
Kyle that he could finish
their sentences, he laughed.
“I would never be so pre-
sumptuous,” he said.
“But I will tell you that we
all want to make the world a
better place and they expect
more out of me than other
clients. They make me more
innovative.”
It’s also important that
projects come in within or
under the budget.
“Believe me, no one hands
you a blank check,” Dynia
said.
In other words, architects
can’t be artists in front of a
blank canvas, who follow
their muse.
“Architecture is a combi-
nation of art, science and
business,” Dynia said.
“All three of those things
go hand-in-hand,” he said.
He is keenly aware that
the project has to pencil out.
“Truthfully, form follows
finance,” he said.
He knows that first-hand.
He once developed a proj-
ect in Jackson Hole, but
when the economy changed,
he had to rezone it for an
entirely different use.
Asked to step back from
his own work and what the
Zeppelins are accomplish-
ing, from a macro view,
what does he think of the
design of many new build-
ings, especially apartments?
Point blank, does he think
many of them are ugly?
“I think there are things
out there that are ugly,”
Dynia said.
At the same time, he
doesn’t want to be a “drive-
by” judge of many of the
new buildings sprouting up
in Denver.
“I look at some buildings
and I think they are lost
opportunities,” Dynia said.
Some large developers
don’t want to take risk with
the design and are more
comfortable with turning
out buildings that have
shown to be profitable
investments, he said.
“And it’s not just Denver.
That is happening in New
York City, too,” he said.
Also, not every building
has to sport an eye-catching
design.
“There is nothing wrong
with background buildings,”
Dynia said.
The more time he spends
in Denver and especially
RiNo, the more time he
wants to spend there.
“What I have really come
to appreciate about Den-
ver is it really is where the
endless plains, the endless
flatlands, kind of meet the
mountains. I take inspiration
from both.”
He currently is in talks to
do a number of projects in
RiNo, he said.
He goes back to Jackson
Hole on a regular basis to
meet with clients.
“These days, you can work
from anywhere, of course,
but it is still important to
have face-to-face time with
clients,” he said.
When he is not working,
more and more, he and his
longtime girlfriend, Ahita
Ardalan, who was born in
Tehran and once danced in
the Paris Opera Ballet, are
discovering all of the cul-
tural aspects of Denver.
Denver’s Performing Arts
Center, for example, is the
second largest in the U.S.,
after the Kennedy Center in
New York.
“We love the theater, we
love opera, we love jazz.”
They also love to travel
and in recent years have
been to Cuba, Moscow and
China, among other places.
He also owns some classic
cars from the 1960s, includ-
ing a VW Beetle and two
Corvairs.
While he still likes to visit
New York City, he no longer
thinks it is the only place he
can truly be happy, profes-
sionally and personally.
“I’ve long gotten over the
notion of my youth that I
was somehow guilty of infi-
delity if I wasn’t living and
working in New York City.
I’ve long gotten over that
silliness.”
s
Profile
Stephen Dynia
