CREJ

/ BUILDING DIALOGUE / DECEMBER 2017

Markese. “We were pretty excited when the project kicked off

again and Hines said they thought the climate was right, the

landowner and the investors thought it was the right time to

get launched and do the project essentially without any ten-

ants.”

According to Markese and Despard, building on spec wasn’t

much of a gamble because they saw an exploitable void in the

marketplace for Class A office space. Their attitude became, “If

we build it, they will come.”

“Part of it was that we found Denver was one of those towns

where you really had to break ground, start construction and

get a ways down the road in terms of the building being built

for the market to respond,” said Markese.

A groundbreaking ceremony for the project was held June

10, 2015.

A Colorado Influence on Design

As you gaze up at 1144 Fifteenth, it’s readily obvious that this

is not production architecture. The faceted taper of the tower,

the cleave right down the middle, the aluminum fins, precise

beveled edges in the soffits – they all speak to a design team

at the top of its game.

According to Markese, the idea of a more sculptural build-

ing was something that Hines and Pickard Chilton pursued

from the start.

“Part of our challenge was how do we take a classic sky-

scraper with a base, middle, and top and interpret in a new

interesting way,” says Markese. “In order to reduce the bulk,

the first thing we did was take a rectangle and shear it, split

it down the middle and slide it a little bit. Then we began to

look at ideas about faceting the surfaces as well as the top, so

that it would catch the light and create a different perspective

frommultiple vantage points.”

“We did some really creative things at the top of the build-

ing, beveled the glass as it went around the building, offset

the forward plates, so that from every different vantage point

downtown you see a different building,” says Despard. “The

Front Range was definitely an inspiration for the roofline and

it is probably a building that you wouldn’t build in New York

or San Francisco. There are lots of natural materials in the

building that reflect elements of our state. So, that was the

theme as we continued further defining the overall design.”

As Markese talked more about the design, he paused and

remembered other key players in the process. “I’ve got to tell

you, the city, and the organizations within the city, did a really

good job of making sure that we delivered a quality building

and they also allowed us to work with them collaboratively

to come up with something that was visually interesting. We

were impressed by that.”

The Key to Staying on Schedule

The fact that 1144 Fifteenth is on schedule, despite such a

massive undertaking that sees 400 tradesman a day riding the

hoist, is by design and process.

“I think what makes Hines more successful is that we’re

very focused on quality design, complete design, 100 percent

design construction documents before we ever put a shovel in

the ground,” says Dave Klebba, vice president of construction

/ 1144 Fifteenth Birth of a Denver Icon /