This project takes advantage of its location by providing an urban design approach to Denver’s downtown river while harvesting tall grasses during the summer months for the cold winter season. During the spring season, as warmer temperatures rise, the building units shed their secondary walls into the South Pallet river at various locations throughout the downtown core. These ‘pods’ provide several different functions during the summer depending on their location on the river. These functions include: harvesting small mouth and large mouth fish, bass and trout are reintroduced to the river for anglers and natural river ecology; Cleaning the water with native thick grass plants through natural processes; Serve as a kayak checkpoints where kayakers can tie up their boats to relax, have lunch and check the weather and river climate via kiosks and wifi; Harvest energy with highly efficient energy river turbines running off the natural flow of the river; Provide walking areas for learning tours and for children to learn about the river, fish harvesting and sustainability. The most important of these functions however, and the one that effects our project site most is the harvesting of tall grasses. These ‘pods’ are fixed sizes, 4’ x 8’ and are attached to the building units during the fall and winter months to increase insulation and keep in warmth created inside the units. Come spring time, they are released back into the river for another cycle of plant growth.
The 3 housing units types, single, couple and family, are all created around a 4’ x 8’ dimension - the typical building material size. These sizes can be cut into pieces but limited to a 2’ x 2’ dimension and arranged on a 4’ x 4’ grid throughout the building. The units are customizable to specific needs of an individual and are assembled on site, which provides flexibility to users as they can add-on or take away at any time.
We used a metaphor of tree houses for the structure and unit concept - the tree providing a grounding structure while the units are built freely throughout its branches. As the units are built, open spaces occur creating a community environment for the users. These open spaces could be used for community BBQ’s, playgrounds for children, exercising or community gardens. The scaffolding like structure provides flexibility to the users while aesthetically creating a light weight structural frame, touching the ground in only specific strategic locations. Freeing up the ground floor creates a public spaces with a wide variety of uses, such as a public market connecting to the TAXI development and a theater for movies and lectures.
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