architecture + infrastructure consultants for real property • expert services

Our work addresses the architecture and infrastructure problems of a wide range of building and property types.

Regional mall redevelopment

Our client, owner of a portfolio of community and regional malls, believed a three-level urban mall they acquired in a recent in a recent multi-property transaction had circulation problems affecting sales revenues of line as well as anchor tenants. We subcontracted with specialist firms to obtain as-is drawings and pedestrian counts done to our specifications. Using several techniques including shape-network analysis, we analyzed the existing conditions to diagnose the specifics of the spatial problem and to develop a design decision model. We then worked with the owners and their architects on redesign.

Urban configuration analysis for an architectural design competition.

Our client was the only local architecture firm in a national competition to design a major governmental office building for the City and County of Denver. The building would be of public significance and in a key location linking commercial and civic districts. We conducted a detailed examination and analysis of pedestrian space to identify spatial patterns affecting the location and configuration of potential entrances to the new building to pedestrian and vehicle accessways to all buildings and sites within 1000 feet of the site. Our client won the competition.

Affordable housing in Denver

Our client was a large Hispanic organization engaged in a design-build competition to acquire land in a southwest Denver neighborhood populated with many immigrant Mexican families. We acted as design managers to respond to the competition program and worked with the market analyst, architects, financing specialist, housing specialist, contractor and director of the organization to develop and submit a proposal.

Spatial patterns and critical communication in the workplace.

As part of evaluation of control room design in the hydroprocessing industry, we conducted an international survey of abnormal situation management experts to determine the extent to which design could impact communication under conditions of very high risk. Responses indicated a need for more humanely designed control room environments but confusion as to what design really meant in terms of these environments.

Historic public space

Our client was a diverse citizens group concerned about the impact of new downtown plans on the vitality of the originally settled part of Tucson near the Santa Cruz River, an area of major archeological and hydrological significance. We did an audit of the existing configuration of public space patterns in the area as well as a shape-network analysis of the new plans in order to identify problems to be addressed. Subsequent plans were changed in response.

Hospitality in the Gulag

Several years a go the mayor of Magadan, Siberia visited Anchorage due across the Bering Sea. Following this, he decided his city needed a new, American-style motel. A joint private/public design and construction project was undertaken with support from the US government . The building was designed for modular construction in the northwest and shipped by barge from Seattle. We were asked to help analyze the market and financial data and, using translations and videotapes of the area, we reviewed and rewrote the studies.

Highest and best use for an Elizabethan country house

Cherokee Castle has become an important site for architecture tours. It was owned by the late Ms. Tweet Kimball and designed and built in the manner of a late medieval castle in 1924-1926 by prominent Denver architect Burnham F. Hoyt. It is sited on the sheer edge of a bluff rising vertically about 150 feet from the valley floor below with a panoramic view of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains from Longs Peak to the north south to Pikes Peak. We were retained by Ms. Kimball to prepare a detailed building and highest and best use analysis of this major historic country house for re-use as a museum that displays her collection and exemplifies the design of a rare building type and the work of an important Denver architect.

Spatial strategy for main street.

At 26 miles, Denver's Colfax Avenue is one of the longest commercial streets in the world. Oddly, just east of downtown Denver next to some of the finest, most vibrant early 20th century single-family neighborhoods, commercial property values had fallen proportionally far behind those of residential properties a few doors away. And though they could easily walk to Colfax, nearby residents rarely frequented Colfax merchants. The problem was to identify the source of recurrent stigma.

Our continuing involvement began as an author of the Strategic Action Plan for the Colfax Business Improvement District. Space Analytics used shape-network approaches to identify the key problem as the intelligibility of the street to middle-class pedestrians and drivers caused by a combination of inattention to right-of-way improvements and poor private development practices allowed by local public agencies over the years. Since our initial report, the street has experienced $30,000,000 of private sector investment along with an intensive public sector planning effort.

Testing knowledge collaboration in the corporate workplace.

Our client, a major manufacturer of office and furniture systems, asked us to analyze the spatial and functional/economic effects of new products in a corporate real estate context. We used shape-networks to identify before-after differences in productivity and satisfaction and explain unexpected and disappointing results in the after configuration of a large workplace area

The most expensive downtown park in America

Denver's Skyline Park was referred to as the most expensive park built in the early 1970s. But by the mid 1990s, the park had become a steeplechase for skateboards and bikes and a hangout for hoboes. Street-level shops and restaurants in properties immediately facing the park were rarely successful.

Our analysis prepared for the Downtown Denver Partnership showed a combination of internal configuration and poor connections to the street grid made it possible to 'privatize' substantial parts of Skyline Park minimizing its everyday use by middle-class downtowners. It was redesigned and rebuilt.