Boulderspace

Following up with our participating architects from Design Project Build - Architect Challenge, we have asked each architect pair to share the thoughts and inspiration within their designs. We will be exhibiting the architect’s work over the next few weeks, starting with the work of Harvey Hine and Lars Zimmerman.

Team: Harvey Hine, Harvey M. Hine Architects, P.C & Lars Zimmerman, Concept 3d
Project: Whole Foods redesign

Suburban blight is an environmental and aesthetic problem that plagues American towns and cities. Endless miles of housing developments connected by highways framed by parking lots, strip malls and big box stores is becoming the defining image of this country.

Our challenge was to redesign the expanded 87,000 square foot Whole Foods grocery store on Pearl and Thirtieth street. This site is adjacent to the future transit center that will include busses and train service to Denver. Our opinion is that the site is under utilized and that maximum density next to transit centers is necessary to provide minimum carbon impact.

Big box stores have a terrible visual impact on the urban environment. They are essentially blank walls twenty plus feet in height and hundreds of feet long. Few windows are located around the entry, otherwise all of the other walls are solid.

Our solution to this architectural problem was to locate the store below ground level. Car access to the store is down open ramps leading to a one hundred and sixty foot diameter open plaza. Stores including Whole Foods and Barns and Noble would have large glass fronts open to the plaza. Ramps from the plaza would lead further down to underground parking located below the retail stores. The parking structure could be connected to the parking of the transit center.

We designed a large glass pyramidal greenhouse used for growing vegetables for Whole foods. The glass beacon also serves as the street level entry for the store. Skylights surrounded by community gardens provide daylight to the ecologically designed store. The existing playing fields were expanded to include a soccer field and basketball courts.

Last but not least a seven hundred and fifty foot residential tower housing one hundred and fifty residential units was located close to the transit center with a connecting bridge. This tower would house the equivalent to forty acres of suburban houses.

We do not recommend that a private developer be allowed to build a tower in the City of Boulder. We believe that it should be a joint governmental and nonprofit venture. Profits from the project could provide much needed low income housing. Forty years ago it was proposed by a prominent City leader that brought NCAR to Boulder that Boulder should have four residential skyscrapers. I suggest that this proposal is as fresh and necessary today as it was forty years ago.

Tags: 2905 Pearl Street, Architect Challenge, Boulder Colorado, Design Project Build, Harvey Hine Architects, Whole Foods