Cool Colorado Buildings

Filed under: Cool Projects — nedpelger

Sorry for the lack of posts lately, we’re roadtripping in a 95 Dodge Van through the American northwest. Just to make it interesting, we decided to take six people, including 14 month old grandson #2, and to camp along the way. YeeHaw.

Actually we’re having a wonderful time, the kids are great and the adults all appreciate the beauty of this amazing country. We stopped at a wonderful Indian store along Rt 70 in Missouri and I picked up a video about Native Americans titled More than Bows and Arrows. A clip is shown below:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLUTmrU7oBU

One of the interesting ideas in the movie concerned the strong Indian design influence on Western building design. As I looked around, I saw it everywhere. Here are a few photos.

Can you pick out the various Native American design elements? This new flex-space building below (near Denver) illustrates several of the elements. The horizontal parapets, the squares for decoration, the starburst entrance header and the natural colors all derive from the Indian designs.

Seeing this pad next door to the completed building reminds me of the things I think about during building design: where does the sprinkler riser go and how is it installed, where does the sanitary sewer and the electrical come in, how are the walls coming through the slabs? The folks building these spaces seem to have a good handle on the efficiency, which translates into successful projects in the present and the future.

Since we were staying near Red Rocks State Park, I wanted to visit to re-experience a profound impression from my youth. When I was a roadie on the 1978 Springsteen Darkness on the Edge of Town tour, we played the Red Rocks Amphitheater. I was overwhelmed by the beauty, even as we struggled to get the sound right. I remember the high frequencies refracted (remember high school physics class when waves from two sources sometimes doubled up and gained tremendous amplitude?) and sounded way too piercing some spots and dead a few feet over. We played around with speaker directions and got it better, but it was a tough place to be a sound puke.

I laughed as I watched the video with rock stars saying the place had magical acoustics…the best in the world. Note from Ned: never believe celebrities, they rarely involve themselves in the details that get to the truth. The beauty of the place still moved me, though.