A major new academic building planned for Downtown Denver’s Auraria campus will break ground on December 7, 2007.

The new $111 million Auraria Campus Science Building project is technically an addition to the existing Science facility, but will visually stand out as its own building in several ways. The existing building is a 3-story 143,000 SF structure that is set back from Speer Boulevard by about 200 feet and is aligned generally along the Arapahoe Street axis. The new project will connect to the existing building via a short passageway and add an additional 181,000 SF of space–more than doubling the size of the original facility.

The configuration and placement of the new 5-story structure is particularly important. The southern side of the addition will extend the Arapahoe street edge over to Speer. The eastern side becomes the first Auraria campus structure to establish a Speer Boulevard street wall–a key component of the Downtown Area Plan’s goal to connect Auraria with the core Downtown. Finally, the northern side of the addition angles to run parallel with the south face of the North Classroom building to reinforce the Lawrence Street axis and to visually anchor the Speer/Lawrence corner.

To illustrate the new building’s location, here are four images. Top row: urban design framework (left) and a figure/ground sketch of the whole campus (right), both courtesy of AndersonMasonDale Architects. Bottom row: site plan (left) prepared by studioINSITE, and my DenverInfill aerial version (right).

Here are three more images, all courtesy of AndersonMasonDale. From left to right: view of model looking southeast towards the Performing Arts Complex; view looking southwest down Lawrence Street; view looking northwest from across Speer:

The $111 million project budget also includes the renovation of the entire existing Science building. The new structure will be LEED certified and is scheduled to be complete by the summer of 2009, with renovation of the existing facility finished by fall 2010.