AIA Colorado Recognizes AMD with Top Design Honors

Date
September 28, 2022

Category
News

AMD is thrilled to announce that AIA Colorado recognized two projects with three awards this year, honoring Park Union Bridge with an Award of Excellence, and the First Year Residence Hall at the University of Denver with an Award of Merit and an Award of Merit in Sustainability.

Park Union Bridge
Colorado Springs, Colorado
Award of Excellence

The Park Union Bridge is a pedestrian and bicycle bridge connecting southwest downtown Colorado Springs to America the Beautiful Park. The structure restores important connections that are helping re-invigorate long neglected urban precincts, and the design of the bridge links it to the striking architecture of the adjacent United States Olympic & Paralympic Museum. Designed in collaboration with Diller Scofidio & Renfro.

The jury elegantly summarized the project saying, “the dynamic Park Union Bridge provides an ethereal connection between southwest downtown Colorado Springs and America the Beautiful Park. The lightness and economy of gestures and materiality elegantly convey movement and grace.”

By extending the east-west axis of Vermijo Avenue to America the Beautiful Park, the new bridge re-connects the urban fabric of downtown Colorado Springs, a plan that has been in development for decades.

In the evenings, lighting along the bridge traces a single vector from one side of the tracks to the other, giving a sense of speed and motion while illuminating pedestrians and cyclists.

Two interlocked loops, stretching from either side of the railyard, connect the museum and the park. The bridge is an exercise in fitness--both in terms of material and geometry.

First Year Residence Hall
University of Denver, CO
Award of Merit
Award of Merit in Sustainability

The First Year Residence Hall is a response to the University of Denver’s vision for a more inclusive campus environment embracing first-generation students, cultivating student retention by building bonds to the University community, and shaping graduates who are prepared to meaningfully engage the world and different points of view. The Hall is specifically designed to create the sense of belonging students need to thrive.

The jury recognized the new facility for "achieving a sense of vibrant student life, but also embodying the university’s values and sustainability plan through a variety of complex systems not evident to the everyday user.”

The building was designed and built with the adjacent Community Commons to transform what has been an inward-looking campus into one that reaches out to the city, creating a new urban edge to the west and mediating the campus’ relationship with the adjacent residential neighborhood.

The 500 beds earmarked for freshman are designed around nested scales of community, organized into identifiable cohorts that allow students to gradually build relationships and a sense of belonging.

Traditional campus character is reinterpreted to imbue the intrinsic with an informality that welcomes a powerfully inclusive vision, exemplified by the building’s brick masonry which re-sorts the old-school brick blend into striated layers suggesting sedimentary geology common to Colorado.