SEED COMMUNITY LEARNING CENTER AND MARKETPLACE
SEED COMMUNITY LEARNING CENTER AND MARKETPLACE
“Client”: Sun Valley Neighborhood, Eco-Districts Target City
Location: Denver, CO
Team: Leigh Bryant, Charlie Shae, Jim Hillard
Program: University of Colorado, Denver
Phase of Involvement: Design Studio
Date: Fall 2016
Contributions: Integral to the team design effort, site analysis, Revit model, renders, plans, integrating Rhino screen design with Revit
Award: Professors’ Top Pick Award (out of 75 students in all 5 studios)
The Sun Valley Neighborhood is both the most central and undervalued area of Denver. The majority of the current residents live in the Sun Valley Homes housing project and there is a growing concern about displacement in the targeted “Eco-district,” given significant projected investment. The poverty rate is five times higher than Denver as a whole and this coupled with the area’s isolation has mother, grandmother, and resident of Sun Valley, Toni Cisneros asking, “What do people say? We’re the land of the forgotten.”
SEED aims to integrate with and energize the community by providing a marketplace, a platform for education and entrepreneurship, and gathering space.
The real-world understanding of the project was robust as the Studio professor, Principal Yong Cho of Studio Completiva, and his firm developed the design for the parcel in parallel, with the same parameters.
Sun Valley is a food desert, but an overwhelming majority of the population are refugees and immigrants that have brought with them a richness of culinary culture.
The Denver Housing Authority distilled desires for a neighborhood learning lab, placemaking through food, developing of strong community partnerships, a job training facility, and social outdoor spaces.
After absorbing the context, SEED was created to inspire a sense of pride and ownership in, and visibility for, the unique food culture in Sun Valley.
The first floor became an open air marketplace with a mix of permanent and temporary tenant spaces, lowering the barriers to entry. Second and third floors became coworking space with a focus on agricultural science, restaurant management, and culinary studies. The boundaries of sustainable architecture were pushed with a double-skin façade inhabited by plant life, while indoor teaching gardens create a year-round farm to table connection often not possible in Denver’s climate, and event/public hangout spaces throughout ensure the whole community gets involved.
