During our current boom, are we getting the quality buildings and public spaces we deserve? This was the subject of an AIA-ULI Explorer series-Historic Denver forum, featuring leading architects and developers, held at Denver Art Museum August 20, 2015.

More than 240 attended, most of them also architects and developers, to hear a panel including Mukul Malhotra, director of urban design, MIG; Randy Nichols, president, Nichols Partnership; Brit Probst, principal, David Partnership, Chris Shears, principal, SA+R; and Mickey Zeppelin, founder, Zeppelin Development. Marilee Utter, EVP of the ULI for District Councils, moderated.

About one-third of the audience also participated in a survey. In addition to answering nine questions, they provided 18 pages of comments. See survey results here: http://colorado.uli.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/24/2015/08/Summary-data.pdf

Sample responses: 60 percent said the city’s Form-Based Code enacted in 2010 doesn’t support design quality. Sample comment: “Such strict guidelines only lead to monotony.”

Seventy percent favored city-wide design review, but 80 percent said design guidelines “stifle creative solutions.”

Marilee Utter launched the conversation by asking if everyone agreed that there is a problem. She quoted extensively from recent and highly critical Denver Post articles by architect Jeff Sheppard and Ray Rinaldi. Issues outlined were not just ugly or ho-hum buildings, but poor urban design, cheap building materials, and repetitive building forms.

“We are in kind of a low point on design,” said Nichols. “Sheppard’s article sounded the alarm, but didn’t propose solutions.”

“We have a prototype building that seems to have been dropped from a plane onto the site,” said Zeppelin, referring to the many podium apartments being built in Denver. “Our zoning guidelines don’t ask the basic question: What is your project going to do to improve the community and the city? Where is the public space and where are the ground-floor uses? We need people-based solutions.”

“It’s not just Denver but every city,” said the Bay Area-based Malhotra. “It’s a common problem to even Portland and Vancouver.”

Utter said, “We need to have better design to achieve our ambition of creating a world-class city. Can you think of a great city that’s ugly?”

No one argued that each building needs to be an icon, but Malhotra spoke of adding to the cityscape as part of a narrative: “Whether it’s a background building or a jewel—it needs to contribute to the story.”

Utter asked if design pays. Probst observed that is the whole of the public realm that creates value in a city.

The so-called Texas doughnut podium apartment building, typically stick-built and squat, took predictable hits. “Multifamily housing is by definition the most formulaic and repetitive,” said Probst. Utter noted that ground-floor retail spaces in new apartments are usually given over to the sales and fitness center with no street-enlivening retail.

“The podium building can be handled creatively,” said Shears, “but the form-based code often limits the height to five floors, which pushes the density and the bulk, and you can’t afford to put the parking below ground.”

“It’s partly the period we’re in,” said Nichols. “We not building beautiful civic buildings or expensive condos, because we’re building for [the now-prevalent] 25-year-old [demographic]. This might be their first home and they can’t afford much.”

How to elevate design values? Shears called out for the need for an architect critic, “although I don’t think the Denver Post can afford it.”

An audience member called for a stronger university architecture program in Denver. Another one, developer Bill Swalling, noted that the Vancouver, B.C., was able to influence design quality and the public realm “with the really big carrot of a 25 percent density bonus.”

Other solutions proposed and debated?

Zeppelin: “You need to start by asking the community; go to the neighborhood first.”
Probst: “I really don’t want the neighborhood empowered to dictate design and density. There is too much angst about traffic leading to NIMBYism.”

Zeppelin: “Try some different product types, like micro-housing with shared kitchens.”

Nichols: “The solution is not in dictated standards. Tastes change and what is attractive now is not in 10 years.”

Zeppelin: “As a developer, I don’t want more regulation, but we can try more of an advisory approach.”

Nichols: “An advisory board where you can take it or leave it, but perhaps there are awards and tax-incentives for doing the right thing.”

Zeppelin: “Following the successful LEED approach, maybe we can have DEED for good design.”

Probst: “We need to put a qualitative element back into the form-based code. When Jennifer Moulton was planning director, everything was done by PUD [planned-unit development], with design standards. Peter Park said this was a deterrent to development.”

Zeppelin: “Let have some basic design standards, but not hard design review.”

Shears: “If we had this city-wide, there would be not enough qualified people to serve on all the design review boards.”

Zeppelin: “We need a more collaborative approach that builds community. If we want to have a great city, that’s a city that cares how it looks, and that can’t be legislated.”

Malhotra: “We need to consider engaging the other senses and not just the visual. Also Denver should consider looking at its street standards. You see the same treatment in every streetscape. What if Macy’s installed a window display and said, ‘This is the best window display ever and we will never change it?”

ULI thanks: Cathy Rosset and staff of AIA Colorado; Annie Levinsky of Historic Denver: and the Explorer series committee chaired by LaDonna Baertlein and James Shaffer.

See photos from the event below:

All photos by Tari Ensign