Denver Airport

Denver’s New Train Platforms
The 2012 Denver Train Station train shed, adjacent to the historic Denver Union Station

I have had a lifelong love of trains and of the stations where we board them. My love for them is partly inherited. My grandfather worked his whole career on the Soo Line RR, having retired as a Conductor on the overnight “Winnepeger,” running from his home in the Twin Cities to the city of the train’s namesake. And my father worked on the same railroad while in college. Of course, having spent my younger years in Japan, riding trains was an everyday occurrence.

And so I am delighted this week to feature the ‘new’ (2012) open-air train shed built adjacent to Denver’s historic Union Station (now beautifully repurposed as the Crawford Hotel). What especially pleases me about the new station’s addition to the opportunities available to rail travelers in the U.S. is the apparent intention for this project to reflect a harmony with Denver’s tensile-structure airport terminal (featured in my prior post).

SOM Architects Transportation Hub site plan
The new station awning structure with the historic Union Station in the background

These train station platforms and their exuberant rooflines at the heart of the city, designed as part of a new transportation hub, were the creation of the long-successful and ‘big name’ architectural firm, Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill (now generally known as SOM). The awning-like structures over the platforms recall the translucent glass and steel train platform awnings familiar to rail travelers in the U.K. A difference here from the also-white structures at Denver Airport is the predominant use of steel beams as principal supports for the awnings, rather than a primary reliance upon tensile cables and poles. A greater resemblance to bridge structures results from this design choice, while also retaining the stretched fabric layers of weather protection, which like those of the airport are translucent. A lyrical building for public use once again has been provided for travelers to and within Denver.

Interior view showing the translucent fabric awning panels and support beams

One other significant connection between Denver Airport and the city’s new transportation hub has been established by the construction of a rail line directly linking the two. Adjacent to the tracks employed by Amtrak’s cross-country trains, Denver now has a rail line dedicated to the needs of those who wish to get to the airport, saving time as well as parking and or shuttle costs.

Station interior showing the Regional Transportation District (RTD) airport train platforms (foreground)
An RTD airport train arriving at its destination

Denver’s new transportation hub serves as an attractive inner city renewal project, and provides a similar sense of uplift and visual ‘joy’ as does the airport. Along with the nearby 1995 Coors Field baseball park, the hub further enhances the visitor-appeal of the city’s downtown area, and serves as a central point for the region’s light rail network (RTD / Regional Transportation District).

The Station Complex with the Union Station Crawford Hotel and Denver downtown skyline

Increasingly we are recognizing the continuing implications of America’s significant distances between cities, the relatively low population density of areas between them, and how our reliance upon our cars and our expansive interstate highway system has reduced the financial viability of railroads as a primary resource for our passenger transportation needs. Nevertheless, it is pleasing to see that where new or revitalized rail stations and terminals are contemplated, there has been a demonstrated growth in awareness of their significance as public spaces not only through which we meet our travel needs, but as places where we meet and share meaningful time with others.

Evening at the station

SOM’s Denver Station and the design of its open-air train awnings reminds me of another building, one I have loved since childhood, Kenzo Tange’s 1964 Tokyo Olympics aquatics building, which my family passed by on many family Sunday train trips to church. Tange’s employment of catenary cables for the suspension of the sweeping curved rooflines serves in a similar way as Denver Station to lift our awareness above ourselves. Design achievements like these move us to contemplate beauty as a noble goal of architecture and in engineering, a goal just as important to us as utility and efficiency.

Kenzo Tange’s catenary cable supported roofline for his 1964 Olympics aquatic center
What the new Denver Train Station replaced

Note: My prior post featuring Tange’s Olympics aquatic center can be viewed by clicking here.

Denver Airport ‘s Beautiful Tensile Architecture 
Some of the tensile structure canopies over the Denver International Airport terminal (DIA)

In order to appreciate the beauty of tensile architecture, we need to remind ourselves of how most traditional buildings, from the ancient pyramids and China’s Great Wall through to the tallest modern buildings, have been built. Familiar architectural structures rely upon compression, the stacking of weighty materials upon others in a stable way to achieve height. Whether those materials are heavy, like the massive stone blocks supporting the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, or as in the first modern reinforced steel ‘skyscrapers’ such as the former Home Insurance Building in Chicago, traditional architecture has relied upon the compression of forces created by their materials to attain successively higher elevations over the course of time.

The tensile structure roofline of the Denver International Airport terminal building

Tensile architecture relies upon what its name suggests in order to attain stable and enduring structures – the dynamic of tension between the various materials and structural elements that are employed. The way that tensile structures achieve what appear to be daring results can be explained by reference to the poles and cables with which they are constructed.

Cable-supported columns, poles, and awnings, at Denver International Airport (DIA)

Though the name for this type of structure may be new to many of us, those who enjoy viewing sporting events set in large public spaces have seen and become visually familiar with tensile structures at least since the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Germany. Designed by Frei Otto and Gunther Behnisch, the imaginative canopy protecting much of the crowd seating was seen by millions on television and in news reports.

1972 Olympic Stadium designed by Frei Otto and Gunther Behnisch

Tensile architectural design continues to be used widely throughout the world to erect buildings for public purposes. Denver’s 1995 International Airport Terminal building, designed by Curtis Fentress and Fentress Architects, provides a compelling example. The architects’ achievement represents a stunning contrast to Denver’s former and very conventional Stapleton AirPort buildings.

Those who travel through DIA have an opportunity to experience firsthand what such structures can inspire. They provide occasions on which we can pass through public spaces filled with light, that feel open and uplifting, and which have the capacity to capture our attention. Buildings of this kind expand our sense of the moment in community with others, and lift us above our personal concerns by reminding us – literally- of more expansive imaginative horizons. As the venerable great dome of the US Capitol building gives convincing evidence, these are qualities to which all public architecture should aspire.

Three thematic sources of inspiration for Curtis Fentress’s design for the DIA terminal include Denver’s well-known reputation for being the ‘mile high city,’ the profile of the Rocky Mountains visible from the terminal and the city, as well as the heights to which modern aviation take us. As the images included here demonstrate, the airport’s tent-like awnings create a dramatic roofline, as well as soaring translucent interior ceilings, delighting both visitors and passengers, as well students of architecture who have never traveled to encounter these structures.

A still from a video showing the architect sketching the Rocky Mountain skyline from the vantage point of the air terminal, in a possible allusion to the terminal’s canopy structure

Since my first visit, the Denver Airport has been one of my favorite examples of modern public architecture, both because of the vision and notable aims of its principal architect, as well as because of the experientially transformative results he and his team of designers and builders were able to achieve. Like the pleasing effect of arriving at London’s St Pancras or one of the other luminous Victorian train sheds, the DIA terminal is the kind of humane environment that can ameliorate the stress of modern-day air travel.

Departure and Arrival areas at DIA

Note: I hope to feature Denver’s new (2014) canopied train platforms, perhaps inspired by the DIA terminal, in a future post.