PROTO-ARCHITECTURE

David Baker, one the TAXIs architects

TAXI is a mixed-use development in the RINO [River North], an eclectic arts district of Denver set along the Platte River, just to the north of downtown.  Nestled in the southeast armpit of I-25 and I-70, TAXI reclaims the old Yellow Cab headquarters and maintenance facility.  I enjoyed a tour of the site while at the AIA Convention this year and was happy to have two of the architects involved in the project as guides.  The first was Alan Eban Brown, a local award winning architect who is known for his sustainable residential architecture, and who officially lead the tour for the convention.  The second was David Baker, a San Francisco based designer (who’s work I’ve followed for years, as we both primarily focus of urban infill, mixed-use use projects, with a heavy residential component), and who showed up informally to walk the tour with the crowd.

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A small firm with a large impact on the residential scene, David Baker + Partners is an unabashed innovator in mixed-use urban infill and multi-family residential design.  While their exposure is probably larger within the industry, particularly among those with associations to the typology, they consistently produce designs that are of the highest caliber.

Located in San Fransisco, the firm benefits greatly from the tantalizing crucible in which the local vibe, urban culture and artistically sophisticated combine to produce a fertile ground for design opportunities.  That said, being in this sector of design myself, many don’t understand the economic pressures placed on the typology, whose funding and financial returns are on completely difference scales than most commercial development, and how that, frankly, separates the innovative from the not.  It’s easy to just give up and say “but the funding just isn’t there for that”, while it’s a quite a more challenging avenue to take these hurdles as a opportunities to foster new thinking.   David Baker + Partners does this on a daily basis, constantly refining what urban living is, and can be. Read the rest of this entry →