New CAP Building

The College of Architecture and Planning at the University of Colorado Denver is preparing the next generation of architects, landscape architects, planners and urban designers to create life-enhancing, sustainable environments for the 21st century.

The successes of the College have created the need for a new building.  With strong growth in student enrollments, we are now one of the largest colleges of architecture and related disciplines in the country.  We have exceeded the capacity of our current facilities in Boulder (our undergraduates) and in Denver (our graduates).

But perhaps even more important than the amount of space, our vision for the college requires a new kind of space. We are re-conceiving how we teach, how we partner with our professional design community, how we address the globalization of design and planning, and how we can demonstrate sustainable design principles to our students and to our society.  Each of these requires new kinds of spatial configurations and equipment that can only be accomplished in a new facility.

View the New Building Prospectus.  You can also view the CAP Building Program Plan submitted to the Board of Regents.

CAP Building Roof Usage Diagrams (click on image for larger view)

Diagramming CAP Green Roof

Intent:  To explore the possibilities of the location of a green roof system, both intensive and extensive, on the new University of Colorado - Denver CAP Building. 

• To understand how a green roof may interact with the students we considered:  Circulation (Green Bridges), Recreation, Outdoor Classrooms, and Research. 
• To assess the interaction of different roof types and purposes we considered:   How the story height might interfere with funciton of roofs below, and Microclimate utilization through roof/solar array orientation.
• To get the most benefit for the green roof systems we looked at the solar orientation fo the building considering:  Solar arrays require 8+ hours of direct sunlight which requires specific placement, and Research (extensive gardens) systems need varying degrees of solr exposure.
• Finally, we looked at how the public would interact with the CAP building and its roofs. Thus, we considered:  Bridges leading between buildings, Street interface through green walls, Access to intensive systems, and Movement through buidlign requiring interaction with living system.

UCD Green Roof Research Project

The UCD Green Roof Research Project and the landscape architecture department at University of Colorado - Denver share a vision about being at the forefront in researching, promoting and developing greener technologies to create better and more self-sustainded futrure urban ecologies.  The UCD Green Roof Research Project is committed to explore green roof technologies in this semi-arid climate and make our findings available to other professional and the general public.