CREJ - Building Dialogue - December 2017
In February, Bryce Ballew proudly opened the doors of the first Colorado-based co-working space exclusively dedicated to serving the Front Range AEC industry. Located at 6145 Broadway in Denver’s Broadway Estates neighborhood, Tradecraft Industries is headquartered in a newly constructed 19,000-square-foot industrial space designed in collaboration with me, and my design team at Roth Sheppard Architects. With 20 private offices and over 200 rentable, flexible co-working memberships for small and start-up construction companies and design firms, this collaborative environment provides a place where contractors can organically grow and support one another. Bryce, a former project manager for Jordy Construction, now heads up his own contracting firm, Construction Inc., in addition to overseeing Tradecraft Industries. But this project was unlike anything he’s collaborated on in the past. We chose to approach it as a puzzle of sorts – an analytical challenge that would result in a co-working space that physically manifests the construction worldview Bryce and his clients are mired in every day. To accomplish this, we chose to focus on selecting multiple-use building components and materials that would not only allow us to save time and money, but offer flexibility and streamline construction. Turning a well-known design idiom on its head, we joked that this project was more about “function follows form” than the other way around. And while our choices and solutions didn't necessarily take less time to plan and design, the end result was far more intelligent and cohesive overall, which is what makes this an interesting story. Rather than share a straightforward design overview about yet another co-working space opening in Denver, we thought our peers would be more interested in what we learned along the way, and why we made the choices we did. Case in point: As we began to explore ideas, we kept coming back to shipping containers, but wanted to approach them using a different strategy. Rather than try to turn the containers into something they are not meant to be (as most builders and architects do today), we wanted our design to be guided by more thoughtful questions like: How close is our use of this building component to its original intent? Are we using shipping containers for their best use within the building as well as without? Is our approach truly intentional, or are we trying to be trendy? Ultimately, after determining that shipping containers were the right way to go, everything from the building dimensions to the mezzanine, offices and conference rooms were derived from their standard measurements. Bryce explained, “We wanted to use containers to maximize their unique and inherent structural capabilities rather than transform them into something they were never designed to be. Using them as secure material and equipment storage for our members started what would be a focal structural element of the design.” We applied this analytical approach with other materials as well. For example, after exploring many different options, we chose Polygal paneling attached directly to studs for the interior office walls. This choice not only allows light to filter through offices into the main atrium interior space, but in its raw form it was also off the shelf, durable and economical. Further, unlike a typical painted gypsum board wall, we didn’t need to finish and paint it, or worry about maintenance down the road. Also, the custom lighting feature we incorporated over the main conference room was designed to resemble your typical orange extension cords. “To achieve this, we used orange light cords from Color Cord Co. and suspended them from different heights in an abstract design,” Bryce explained. “It adds a bit of lightheartedness to the space, and reminds one of the industry we’re in.” Another intentional design feature was the location of the boxed element that separates the entry area to the member-only bullpen and the office space within the pre-engineered metal building enclosure. This element houses all utility functions including stacked toilet rooms on both levels, janitor closets, electrical and IT rooms. By keeping all of the plumbing, electrical feeds, etc., within one central location, we were able to achieve significant cost efficiencies and streamline supply to the rest of the building. Ultimately, the goal was to think outside the box about how we could accomplish multiple things using minimal architectural moves or products, or use building elements in a way that they could do multiple things at the same time. Fortunately, our response from the AEC community indicates that we did indeed achieve our objective, with the result being a much-needed gathering place for the industry and more great things yet to come. aharding@rothsheppard.com