Profile

Mile High Center

Denver, Colorado
Completed 1956

Design Principal: I. M. Pei

Mixed-use development with office, retail, exhibition and landscaped open space
 

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Mile High is an innovative mixed-use project born of the conviction that quality architecture and public space, conceived together, make for good investment. The complex was among the first in the United States to provide a welcoming pedestrian precinct as the setting of a center city commercial development.

Mile High comprised Denver's first major building campaign since World War II, and set in motion the transformation of the modern city. The complex includes a family of buildings set back from the street on a 2.7-acre corner lot landscaped with trees, seating, fountains and long shallow pools originally chilled and stocked with Colorado trout. A 23-story tower (Denver's first skyscraper) rises as a pure geometric form, unencumbered by property restrictions or zoning codes. Designed for maximum flexibility and efficiency, the tower uses a unique HVAC system to regulate the peripheral and inner zones of its deep floor plates (127' x 152'). The importance of the system is such that it is traced on the façade with white enamel panels interwoven, tapestry-like, with the dark aluminum bands cladding the structural skeleton.

Instead of the ground floor retail typically installed in investment buildings, the tower has an open arcade where people can stroll and enjoy the landscape. Lost ground floor revenue was recovered in the premium rents commanded by the building's distinction. Shops and restaurants were placed instead in the lower concourse of the wide span exhibition pavilion — a two-story concrete foil to the tower. The complex is completed by a four-story remodeled bank building which, fronting the plaza, earns handsome corner rents despite its mid-block location.

Major Components

23-story office building with 345,000 s/f offices on 23 floors, double-height lobby (50' x 80') and open pedestrian arcade; 32,000 s/f Pavilion (8,450 s/f clear span exposition hall on upper level; retail on 7,750 s/f basement level and 15,560 s/f restaurant level); renovated bank building; landscaped public plaza; parking on adjacent site, connected by tunnel

Awards

I. M. Pei & Associates services

Urban Planning; Architectural Design; Interior Design of public spaces

Associate Architect

Kahn and Jacobs, New York, NY, and
G. Meredith Musick, Denver, CO

Structural

Severud, Elstad, Krueger Associates, New York, NY

Mechanical / Electrical

Jaros Baum and Bolles, New York, NY

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