Back in December 2009, I blogged about the new Student Success Building planned by the Metropolitan State College of Denver for the corner of 9th Street and Auraria Parkway on the Auraria Campus. At that time, only a few massing-model type renderings were available. Today I’m happy to publish our first look at the proposed design by architecture firm RNL Design and Saunders Construction. These images came from a schematic design submittal from April, so while they may not represent the building’s final design, they give us a good idea of the general look of the proposed structure.
First, an aerial view looking north. Auraria Parkway is at the top and 9th Street is on the right. The L-shaped building encloses a pedestrian plaza (as always, click to enlarge):
View from the plaza:
View from across Auraria Parkway looking east:
View from across Auraria Parkway looking west:
View from 9th Street:
View from plaza entry:
The Metro Student Success building will be approximately 145,000 square feet in size and will hold the college’s Registrar’s office, Financial Aid, Student Academic Success, New Student Orientation and other critical support services. The $62 million project is being financed through federal stimulus subsidized bonds, backed by a special assessment approved by Metro State students Spring 2009. The project is aiming for LEED Gold certification.
Construction of the Metro State Student Success Building is slated to begin as early as December of this year with a planned opening of April 2012.
I was under the impression that the Student Success Building would be only one part of a tightly packed group of buildings replacing the entire surface parking lot and part of the old parking structure. While the addition of a much larger green space and other is nice, it makes me wonder if one of the future buildings was scrapped from the design. Perhaps that lawn is just there to get rid of a bigger portion of the parking lot and that someday a new building will be built there? Also, I noticed that the proposed cafe structure is now gone and I am assuming that it has been integrated into the building. Which makes more sense, of course. Overall, I think this building does accomplish the goal of making MSCD more visible as an institution and its design is a welcome break from the blandness of the rest of the campus.
Is it just me or is this building presenting a rather unfriendly face to the pedestrian? Tiny punched openings along the streets and a giant raised platform adjacent to the park.
I agree with Larry’s comment above. Because this building does little to enhance the pedestrian experience on the Auraria Campus, it does little to transform Auraria into a true urban campus. All in all, looks very suburban – given that the campus is located right downtown, that’s a shame. Seems that both the schools in Auraria and the City of Denver would benefit if Auraria integrated with the City. This inward oriented, car culture-era design will assure that the campus will continue to be isolated and apart from Downtown and will do little to nothing to attract non-students. That said, they may not want non-students on the campus, but to me, that defeats the purpose of an urban campus.
Also – I remember a post on here regarding a new building being voted on by Community College of Denver students for the Speer/Champa area, any update on that building?
SC48… the program plan for the CCD building has been completed. The college is preparing to release a Request for Proposals for the architectural design of the building.
If you want to see an additional renderings of this building, check out Metro’s photostream:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/metrostatecollegedenver/show/
I don’t know which rendering is more current, but I’m leaning towards the one’s that have removed the large stair feature.
You can’t really blame them for not addressing the walkability aspect. The building faces (or butts) Auraria Parkway, which, by all accounts is more of a get-out-of-dodge boulevard-scaled throughfare. If we really wanted to address walkability here, Auraria would have to be scaled down significantly, and something other than parking lots would need to be put up on the Pepsi Center side of the roadway.
In general I agree with your observations. I do think that both sides of Auraria Parkway will, over time, begin to fill up with buildings. As the land becomes more valuable, that will be a likely outcome rather than just large parking lots (Think Coors Field). My concern was more for how it relates to the pedestrian not just its walkability. A walkable building has doors on all sides and makes the building a little more porous to any possible flow of pedestrian traffic. However, for a building to be more friendly to the pedestrian, it is important to make the building feel more open along its street level façade (more glass at street level and eyes on the street). I agree that Auraria is a busy street. But, someday it may be filled with buildings on both sides of the street and this building does not contribute to that eventual streetscape in a meaningful way. It appears suburban and put offish to people who may be walking by. In addition, a pedestrian friendly street can present a better streetscape to all the folks driving by, not just the folks walking by. Also, my concerns addressed the tiny punched openings along the very walkable 9th street and the oversized raised platform adjacent to the plaza. All of these things on all sides create a building which still does not sit well on it’s site.
So there building the Clinton Presidential Library? 🙂
Ack.. ‘they’re’
The problem with integrating Auraria into the larger downtown isn’t Auraria Pkwy it’s Speer. While it’s not that big of a deal to cross the street, it just presents a barrier most students down there down want to deal with. I have heard many people on campus say they have never crossed Speer into downtown during the day.
If you really want more students to venture into downtown, some sort of bridge or tunnel needs to be in place to bypass Speer, but who knows how much that would cost, and it brings little tangible benefit to the campus. There really isn’t anything on Auraria that would attract people from downtown. I can’t imagine an office worker making their way to the Tiv for lunch.
In any case, it’s too bad more students don’t hang out in downtown, especially considering both Larimer square and Writers square are about 5 minutes away and the mall is 10. I can make it to Rock Bottom, have a beer and an appetizer and make it back for class within 45 minutes.
A bridge, and maybe a nice little trolley/street car that goes up and down Speer to Larimer Square.
I’m surprised that this design does not include the signature Auraria brown brick, but instead is of buff-colored material. Although it’s not CU Boulder, this campus has always been nicely cohesive with the use of one main color, and this design, besides looking like something out of a suburban office park (and like the Clinton Library, thanks Nick at 3:11), is trying too hard to be different from the whole.
I have to agree with many of the comments above. This building does look quite suburban. But even worse than that, it looks like it was designed in 1965. Yuk. The plaza/quad is pretty cool though.
Simply put, it’s FUGLY. This uninspiring, unrelatable building does nothing for cohesiveness, downtown connectivity or for the students who will have another distant building to walk to in our incliment weather. With the BEAUTIFUL Tivoli building to inspire these architects, this is what they came up with? Go back to Highlands Ranch or nowhere USA and put this atrosity there. What is happening to our city? Why are buildings like this and 1800 Larimer allowed to overshadow true design, functionality and connectivity with the community at large?
P.S. what is the point of the cantilever? This part of town needs to be an extension of lodo with pedestrian friendly retail, restaurants, student housing and entertainment to tie in Pepsi Center.
Last I checked, this building was for Metro State, paid for by the students of Metro State, and meant to benefit Metro State with any additional benefits being supplemental. That is the primary purpose of the bulding, not to house a salad shop and an all-natural beauty salon.
Hell, this building has better connectivity with the street grid, than the beautiful Tivoli Building that you mention. Also, this is not the latest design, it has been modified since April with the stairs being removed and improving the pedestrian connection along the Auraria Parkway, which will end up being a redundant feature.
There’s no guarantee, or even a hint of, the removal of the parking lots at the Pepsi Center anytime in the foreseeable future, so where should the architects try and focus building activity? Along a barren thoroughfare into LoDo or at a pedestrian square that will be crossed by thousands of students daily?
Paul, why can’t they do both? I’m glad we can agree to disagree. I clicked on the link you posted and I think I still saw the staircase facing the parkway you mention being removed!? This will help slightly if true. However, 62 million dollars should be enough to provide Auraria Campus and the city at large a utilitatian asset as well as a visual one. Part of architecture, is how the building relates to it’s surroundings. This will be built across from an existing restaurant, lofts, entertainment center, furniture store, historic district and a thriving downtown. I just think this building looks as though it’s turning it’s back on all of that. Many of the other buildings on campus do this as well but this is an opportuniy to do better.
Also, as a former student of the campus myself I can tell you that integrating student housing, a Kinkos, Chipotle or as you said an all natural beauty salon would be very useful. Someone else suggested a grocery store ran by the students. As a stand alone building I also think it is visually boring but I will say the plaza is cohesive with the rest of the campus. I’m glad we can all have our own opinions. Thanks Ken. Have a nice day.