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86 / BUILDING DIALOGUE / March 2020 global practices are complemented by a growing hospitality practice with recently completed projects including the Jacquard Hotel & Rooftop and Hal- cyon Hotel in Cherry Creek. Regardless of market or typology, a focus on human ex- perience is the connective thread. “First and foremost, we call ourselves a living-centered design firm,” says Barr. “Our mission in that is to really focus on helping humans flourish in everything we do. Architecture supports that.” He points to a hospital as an example. Most firms focus on the patient experience. “CannonDesign takes it a step further and asks, ‘How can we make the janitor in the hospital feel as valued as the patient?’ It becomes more of a continuum of the people working at the hospital and the patients that are being treated there, and how the ar- chitecture of the building interacts with the community around it. There’s a big holistic view.” The education practice takes an out- come-oriented approach, embracing daylighting, open classrooms, and spac- es that emphasize engagement and inter- action. Senior Vice President Anne Weber, director of the K-12 Studio at CannonDesign’s Denver office, calls designing schools “a passion,” not- ing, “I feel designing schools for young people is really critical. It’s part of their formative years, and there are a lot of data that shows the physical environment of a school impacts learning.” Weber says that this link is a tenet of the concept of “21st century learning” that she and her colleagues have embraced for the past decade. However, it doesn’t mesh well with the legacy of schools with cookie-cutter classrooms lining the halls. “We were all taught the same way, and you survive or you don’t,” says Weber. The mod- ern take is based on students having a variety of differ- ent learning styles, or “differentiated learning.” By rethinking traditional classrooms and establish- ing flexible spaces that foster collaboration among both students and teachers, schools are able to break the old mold. “We call it adding soul to the data,” she adds. “Then you have the type of spaces that supports learning the way it needs to happen today.” The ongoing $43 million expansion and renovation of Shepardson Hall is one of several CannonDesign projects at the Colorado State University campus in Fort Collins. It’s all about catalyzing the aforementioned “human flourishing” for students in the agricultural sciences pro- gram when the building is finished in 2021. “Their mis- / CannonDesign in Denver /