CREJ

/ BUILDING DIALOGUE / DECEMBER 2017

/ Sense of Place: Riverview at 1700 Platte /

would appeal greatly to select, premium office tenants.”

Trammell Crow engaged a tried and true design-build part-

nership of Tryba Architects and Saunders Construction to de-

liver the project. The same team had previously completed

similar, tight-site office opportunities at 1900 16th Street just

across Millennium Bridge.

“Architecturally, the interesting thing here is the relation-

ship between Platte Street – a modernized historic context,

the living green context of the river and park, and the idea

of interlacing an office campus between the two,” says John

McIntyre, a principal and senior designer at Tryba Architects.

It is at the intersection of these seemingly opposi-

tional ambitions that Riverview at 1700 Platte plans

to find its sense of place.

“We’ve given the building two dramatically differ-

ent facades in response to the differing contexts,” con-

tinues McIntyre. The Platte Street side reads as two re-

claimed neighborhood buildings – the five-story North

wing and the four-story South wing – connected by a

modern glass link. From the east, however, Riverview at

1700 Platte will be unmistakable. An expansive glass cur-

tain wall covering the entire eastern façade will reveal

the truth – a single structure office complex offering in-

credible city views and an intimate embrace of the South

Platte’s western bank and pedestrian path. “The common-

ality between the two impressions is a strong, robust build-

ing with an open, landscaped courtyard at its center.”

A key driver of the building’s massing during design was

a view plane of downtown Denver from LoHi’s Hirshorn

Park. A view plane is a city-established line of site that must

remain unobstructed by development. In the case of River-

view, the view plane partially extends across the site, limiting

the south wing’s buildable height to four stories. This break

in scale allows both the east and west elevations to achieve

a sense of escalation as the building rises north. Along Platte

Street, large window openings with stone sills punched into

the dual red brick wings propose simplicity, rigor and quality.

The glass link structure takes responsibility for the fifth-floor

elevation gain, allowing the north and south wings to look as

though they were conjoined after the fact rather than orig-