Wash Park lake and boat house

While visiting our great city during the AIA National Convention next month I highly suggest you check out my neighborhood, Washington Park – or better known to us locals as “Wash Park.”  Located just south of downtown you will find one of the best parks in town surrounded by some of the best neighborhoods in the city. The Wash Park neighborhood is a beautiful blend of historic and contemporary architecture style homes. To the east you will find tall, iconic 70s-style apartment complexes that are offset by rows and rows of brick Bungalow single-family homes to the west.  One of the most popular neighborhoods in Denver, Wash Park is the ideal location for young professionals in between owning their first place and still needing a roommate. With 300 days of sunshine, this park gives locals a place to play all year round. Ask anyone in town and they will tell you what Wash Park is the place to be on any given Saturday afternoon.

Volleyball in Wash Park

Like the neighborhood would suggest, the Wash Park neighborhood surrounds a 165-acer park. This urban park has it all – 2 lakes, tennis courts, 2 playgrounds, large stretches of open lawns, a large flower garden, recreation center, a historic boat house, and a number of walking/running/biking trails that loop 3.5 miles around the park. On any given day you will find people walking their dogs, running, or riding their bikes along these paths. But the recreational activities don’t stop there. On the weekends you will find hundreds, if not thousands of people playing volleyball, soccer, and any other park-like activity on the open lawns.

Wash Park Tavern patio

Like most neighborhoods in Denver, Wash Park is not without its share of great restaurants. Whether you’re a self-proclaimed foodie like me or more of a burgers-n-fries kind of guy, you’ll be able to find exactly what you are looking for in Wash Park. For Brunch, I highly recommend checking out Lucile’s Creole Café on Logan Street. Don’t be turned away by the long line at the door, I promise you the food is well worth the wait. For great burgers, beers, and an outdoor patio, check out Wash Park Tavern or the Washington Park Grill on Gaylord Street. After dinner stick around and enjoy some of the great local pubs that Wash Park has to offer. Sing karaoke at Ogden Street South or sit outside on the back patio at Pub on Pearl. For more information on where to eat and drink in Wash Park, I recommend checking out Urbanspoon.com.

B-Cycle Station

The best way to get around Wash Park is to jump on a bicycle and peddle your way around the neighborhood.  Didn’t bring a bike with you? Not a problem! Check out B-Cycle -  Denver’s own bike sharing program. With a number of B-Cycle stations all around the city, you’ll be able to get from downtown to Wash Park in a short 15 minute bike ride. So while you’re enjoying all that Denver has to offer while at the National Convention I hope take the opportunity to explore my great neighborhood!

My apologies, I was channeling Petula Clark there for a minute.  Anyway, in the run up to the National Convention (June 20-22, you ARE going, right?) each of us is going to write a post about the neighborhood we live in, and as you might have guessed, I am lucky enough to live in downtown Denver.

More specifically, I live in LoDo; for those of you not familiar with our nomenclature (SoCo, RiNo, LoHi) that is Lower Downtown.  For Denver, this is the center of many things.  We have some of the best restaurants in the city, Coors Field is 300 feet from my front door, and there are more places to try a martini then there are paint chips in a Sherwin-Williams fan deck.

LoDo is the quintessential “old meets new neighborhood.”  Since the late 1980’s, LoDo has been transformed into one of the liveliest areas in the city. Lower Downtown has among the largest concentrations of Victorian and turn-of-the-century architectural stock in the country.  Many of the large old warehouses have been turned into loft style-condo building, often with a bar, or graphic design studio or advertising agency leasing the street level.  However, the next block over might feature a far more contemporary apartment complex that encompasses an entire city block. 

With Denver’s population set to explode over the next decade, the pace of residential construction in my neighborhood is like nothing I have ever seen.  From my doorstep, I can visit 6 active large-scale construction sites within a 6 block radius.  When all of these projects are fully leased, another 1200+ rental units will have hit the market.  Along with them, all of the support businesses needed to make a dense urban neighborhood function will continue to spring up as well.  Admittedly, some of the new design is decent, and some of it isn’t.  Perhaps there is another post here about the importance of city planning, design guidelines and review boards, and having the rigor to build with quality and to build beautiful, all the while recognizing the immediate housing needs facing our city, but I digress… 

While picking a true favorite isn’t always easy, I have a clear standout in the restaurant department. Grab and friend (or several) and head to Vesta Dipping Grill.  Kari, forever behind the bar, is one of the best bartenders in the city.  Tell her you want a blackberry Manhattan (made with Leopold Brothers Blackberry Whiskey, locally made and locally loved) but skip the sage.  Anything off the menu is a standout, and there are great things for us vegetarians as well.  When you are finished with dinner, hail a cab (which can be tricky in our city, I suggest you download on of the taxi company apps). And head to Beth’s neighborhood of Uptown.  Find your way to D-bar for some of the best chocolate cake you have ever had.  The Chef/owner was on the Food Network for awhile, and he wasn’t there for his pretty face. 

Since there is a limited amount of damage that one can do in 500 words, I can only encourage you to experience the neighborhood for yourself.  For those of you that are local, what is your favorite restaurant or bar in LoDo?  Do you have a favorite building?  For those that are travelling to Denver for the convention, what LoDo landmarks would YOU suggest are a not miss?  I hope to see you around!

Architects are adept at evaluating space, probably more so than most. But the mind’s eye can only see so far. Drawings, models, and computer renderings, these are all tools of the trade for the modern architect. Despite the relatively simply process of creating design studies on the computer, most architects I know still turn to the time honored traditions of building quick sketch models to evaluate their designs.

To clarify for those of you who may not spend every waking moment considering various massing options for various design problems, a sketch model is a physical model, often at a small scale (say 1/16” = 1’-0”) and usually created out of scrap materials. These are purposefully abstracted, and often used early in the design process to narrow down the landslide of ideas that inevitably comes from a blank canvas.

Like most things today, even the sacred tradition of the sketch model is subject to rapid evolution. In this instance I’m speaking about the amazing advancements being made in 3D printing, rapid prototyping, and the integration of CAD/CAM into full scale building processes. No longer is the world of creating physical objects through digital input beyond the reach of the masses, on the contrary, for surprisingly little money you can purchase a desktop sized machine that will literally print practically anything you can imagine.

Obviously we’ve all seen the cute little teacup, or Eifel Tower/Big Ben/Pyramid trinket. But that’s not what I’m talking about here. How about designer clothing, high-end jewelry, sports equipment… even fully functioning kidneys? For the past twenty years, large manufacturing outfits have used 3D printing for prototyping, but now the push is to the general public and beyond. Architecture is being affected as well. While it is still the outlier firm that is actively integrating the full possibilities into their processes, more and more firms are asking themselves how they can utilize this newly accessible technology. My own firm is currently using outsourced opportunities to obtain quick sketch models that are simply printed from our computer models offsite and mailed to us the next day.

Behrokh Khoshenevis, director of the Center for Rapid Automated Fabrication Technologies (CRAFT) at the University of Southern California, has set to the task of perfecting a technology that he has coined “Contour Crafting”. In simple terms Contour Crafting is 3D printing at the scale of full buildings. A cementitious mixture of high tensile concrete is extruded through a machine that is designed to lay continuous beads, layer upon layer, following computer generated data at extremely precise locations and amounts. Entire buildings can simply be printed in a matter of hours, complete with integrated structural, mechanical, and routing systems. Because the patterns can be organic in nature, and are optimized through computer analysis, the resulting buildings can contain less material and produce virtually no waste.

While we may be a ways off from printing our built environments, and given the realities of the construction industry this may not be a technology that ever reaches that level of potential. I can, however, certainly see a real opportunity to print complex construction details on site in the GC’s trailer, hand that physical object to the guys in the field and say, “here, make it look like that”. If a picture is worth a thousand words, in that case an object may be worth its weight in gold. Or at least thermoplastic powder.