• Home
  • Insights
  • OZ Earns Headlines for Improper City Adaptive Reuse Project

OZ Earns Headlines for Improper City Adaptive Reuse Project

August 20, 2019

At any given time within Improper City, the eclectic adaptive reuse project designed by Denver-based OZ Architecture, one might find a handful of tourists hanging out at the facility’s 35-tap bar, not far from where a crew of coworkers are busily tapping away at their laptops, while under the same roof, members of a knitting club convenes for their monthly meeting and residents from the neighborhood stream in, drawn by the aromas drifting from the adjacent outdoor food truck patio.

Improper City, located in a former HVAC warehouse in Denver’s booming post-industrial River North (RiNo) neighborhood, is garnering national attention for its innovative blend of workspace and leisure amenities, with coworking space, a bar, food truck park, café, community event space, spaces to accommodate live music, and even a climbing gym on the roof. The combination brings a much-needed open gathering space to RiNo, a part of Denver that, amid so much redevelopment, has been short on inviting places for people to congregate.

“It’s a pretty dense area that has been redeveloping, but there’s not a lot of spaces where people can gather,” Rebecca Stone, Principal in Charge at OZ, explains to Green Building & Design. “There weren’t a lot of park spaces where all these [industrial sites] were built. So just to have a place where people can go sit and have a coffee or hear music has been pretty wildly successful.”

The building itself is rich with character, with well-preserved concrete floors, exposed duct work and ceiling trusses, enhanced by a design that includes mixed natural and engineered materials, thoughtful allocation of space, some for quiet work and some for socializing, and a lighting design in which skylights introduce plenty of daylight to the building’s open, single-story floorplan. Rather than build up to squeeze the most out of the property, the one-story design reflects the sustainability focus of Improper City’s owners. “Most developers would have tried to build five stories and capture every inch they could,” Stone tells Green Building & Design. “I think that’s the most sustainable thing they did.”

To learn more about how Improper City is helping to transform RiNo into a thriving neighborhood for makers, entrepreneurs and residents, click here.

More Insights

With OZ-Designed Limelight Hotel, Snowmass Finally Gets Its ‘Living Room’

OZ Director of Sustainability, Julie Edwards, Presents an Intro to EcoDistricts

Contact

hello@ozarch.com
303-861-5704

Location

3003 Larimer Street
Denver, CO 80205

Search for