Page 22
— Office Properties Quarterly — June 2016
P
rivately owned public plazas
and pocket parks play a valu-
able role in the open-space
fabric of our rapidly densifying
urban core. Downtown Den-
ver is undergoing the largest building
renaissance in its history and almost
all of that is privately funded and
maintained.This influx of newwork-
ers, visitors and, most importantly, resi-
dents is putting a strain on the existing
parks and public spaces.
According the Outdoor Downtown
Master Plan, an effort jointly led by the
Downtown Denver Partnership and the
Parks and Recreation Department, pri-
vately owned public spaces account for
nearly 30 percent of all of the publicly
accessible outdoor spaces in the down-
town area.
As more and more people inhabit the
downtown environment, they will need
places to sit, meet up, people watch,
eat, walk their dogs and work outside.
Much of this demand currently is being
met and will continue to be met by the
small urban spaces that are created at
the base of new buildings or as part of
a large private development.
This is not a new idea in the history
of dense urban cores like Manhattan,
or in Denver, for that matter. In the
early to mid-1900s, cities were work-
ing hard to ensure that access to open
space and sunlight were maintained.
Planning tools like density bonuses
and step backs granted developers the
ability to build higher if they provided
public spaces at the base of their new
towers.
In the 1970s and ’80s, however,Wil-
liamH.Whyte shed new light onto
what made these spaces actually
successful. He found that spaces that
engaged their surroundings and cre-
ated comfortable human-focused
environments with a
diversity of program
were used more
than many of the
stark, flat voids that
were built. Some of
these ideas defined
the future of design
of the interstitial
urban spaces along
with historical prec-
edents, such as the
famous Paley Park in
Manhattan, which
is largely considered
one of the most
successful of these
typologies.
In Denver, our
urban renewal
period of the 1970s
and 1980s left us with a legacy of many
of the same types of public spaces.The
plazas and pocket parks at the base of
our tallest buildings have been serving
the residents and workers of down-
town Denver since completion.The
Cash Register Building, Seventeenth
Street Plaza, theTabor Center and the
Capitol One Building all have these
publically accessible spaces in some
form or another. Some are notably
more successful than others and some
have been renovated once or twice,
such as theWorldTrade Center Plaza
(now Denver Energy Center).
On a number of recent projects
there has been a more focused effort
on the part of private developers and
their design teams to deliver vibrant,
comfortable and unique spaces to the
urban fabric of downtown Denver.
Rather than thinking only about these
spaces as a tool to achieve a higher
floor-area ratio, these private develop-
ers are conceiving these spaces as an
extension of the office, home or com-
mercial environment that they are
seeking to create.
Projects like 1601Wewatta or the
Triangle Building have given a substan-
tial addition to the public open space
of their surrounding neighborhoods.
These projects are far more than deco-
ration at the base of a tall building;
they are a marketing tool to potential
tenants and a key piece of social infra-
structure needed to create a lively city
experience.
Teams are starting to conceive spac-
es to play, to eat or to work outside that
are catering to the new corporate office
worker who may not necessarily want
to sit behind his desk all day.These
spaces are extensions of the office,
offering places to host meetings, places
to take a break and, most importantly,
places to interact with fellow humans.
Several new projects that will further
this ideal is the Market Street Station,
which is being designed, and 1144 Fif-
teenth Street, which is under construc-
tion and slated to open in 2018.
The profession of landscape architec-
ture is uniquely suited to help deliver
creative, functional and beautiful solu-
tions to these sorts of projects. Most,
if not all, of the successfully designed
urban spaces around downtown Den-
ver used the skills of a landscape archi-
tect. Projects with this facet should
engage the landscape architect in the
early stages of the design process to
ensure full coordination between the
many constraints of working within
and urban area. Site circulation, storm-
water, human comfort, retail location
and signage are just some of the many
factors that can either make or break
these spaces. It is important for these
spaces to become an integral part of
the project and an integral part of the
surrounding urban context.
s
Joshua Brooks,
PLA, ASLA
Associate, Design
Workshop, and
vice president,
public relations,
Colorado chapter,
American Society
of Landscape
Architects, Denver
Design
®
Denver’s Name in Commercial Real
Estate For Over 60 Years!
Proud to announce the relocation of our offices
to “Fuller Plaza” at 5300 DTC Pkwy. in the Denver
Tech Center.
History ... Dedication ... Commitment
(303) 534-4822
Design Workshop Inc.
The plaza at the base of the new 1144 Fifteenth Street will be defined by an iconic gran-
ite mirror, which reflects the changing sky and skyline above.
