Not sure about homes but Sakura square is a nice place to chill out downtown. 

Skyline Park also very good... watch out for the flat-billed caps though. 

Ponti's building at the Denver Art Museum is wonderful. Clyfford Still Museum great as well. Denver Botanical Gardens. Blue Cross Blue Shield Building. NREL's building is amazing if you can get a tour... top secret though. 

Honestly not the most architecturally inspiring city, which is why i left.

Botanic gardens has a nice Japanese Garden.

Not Japanese, but the Dushanbe Teahouse in Boulder. 

Also in Boulder, NCAR. You can hike around there too, just leave your car in the parking lot. 

Red Rocks Amphitheatre and visitor center.

There is a cluster of buildings around the Denver Art Museum that are worth seeing:

Denver Art Museum (old building) by Gio Ponti
Denver Art Museum (new building) by Daniel Libeskind
The Clyfford Still museum by Allied Works
Denver Central Library by Michael Graves

The Wells Fargo Center Tower is by Phillip Johnson. Not his greatest work, but the top of the tower is interesting. 

Also, the downtown Sheraton hotel is in an amazing brutalist building. 

Also the Museum of Contemporary Art by David Adjaye

The Univ. of Colorado Boulder campus is worth a visit. Most  of the buildings are a form of Tuscan Revival. Very attractive taken altogether.

Volunteer, I assume you are joking. That campus is terrible.

Denver International Airport is actually one of my favorite buildings. I think Fentress does exceptional work.

The new ISG building adjacent to Union Station has some cool stuff going on in the brick. 

Union Station's new train canopy is also superlative - SOM San Francisco.

I'd take the boulder campus over DIA anyday. The boulder campus is subtle in it's architecture, but the flatirons are the real icon. DIA is the worst fucking airport I've ever had the pleasure of using. Fucking sucks! with a capital F!  Not to mention DIA is impossible to get to. Fucking hour drive from half of Denver. 

I'd also take the Gonzales library over Graves bullshit any day. 

Frankly.... If you're here for 4 weeks.  spend your time here!

"Volunteer, I assume you are joking. That campus is terrible." Nope, I like it a lot. I would have loved to have gone to school that had such an attractive campus.

Volunteer is right.  CU does have a spectacular campus and setting.  What's the problem?  Maybe those who don't like it think it isn't "urban" enough.  Fine.  Go to CU Denver.  It will have enough druggies, panhandlers and bums to satisfy the most discriminating architect's taste.

Boulder has plenty of druggies, panhandlers and bums!

Denver currently has 35 cranes in the sky. Link

Since 2010, the downtown area has added 128 new non-residential buildings over 4 stories.  Interactive map and writeup (they also have a residential one too) http://denverinfill.com/blog/2...

been away for a bit THX for the post.

i am up here now and there are a bunch of cranes up for sure.

i don't know how active architects are up here but civil engineers and road designers? are busy tearing up the roads around here.   

Places to AVOID:  The Sixteenth Street mall for starters. Mediocre by day and dangerous at night.  Ditto for Civic Center, which is a City Beautiful creation that has been allowed to be turned into a homeless encampment. 

To counter geezer; I've never really felt scared anywhere in Denver or can think of places I wouldn't go...  During the summer Tues-Thurs at Civic Center is Denver Eats (about 20 food trucks).  I've also hung out in Civic Center after work killing time before hitting up the museum.  Can't say I've been there at night though.  There are vagrants like everywhere in Denver.  

City Park, Washington Park, etc are also part of the City Beautiful creations.

16th Street has always been a tourist trap; never been something I was into besides just people watching and using the bus to get across downtown.  

The mall and Civic Center are tame enough in the day but turn nasty after hours.  Another place that is fine in the daytime but not at night is the Cherry Creek bike trail.

I just recently visited the Museum of Contemporary Art by David Adjaye for first time. Was suitably impressed.

If you make it to Civic Center/museum district, The Clyfford Still museum by Allied Works is also excellent (oh man that "open lattice of concrete" ceiling/light diffuser) and you can check out another one of their's under construction, nearby.

You just missed Denver Design Week (and accompanying talks/tours etc al.), but Virginia Village/Krisana Park ft some good local examples of mid-mod homes. There is also a tactical urbanism event on south Broadway next week. Plus a ton of hipster food-courts/food markets in post-industrial/post-hangar spaces (see the Source in RiNo, Denver Central Market or Lowry, Stanley Marketplace).

Finally, go do it hit me up if you are interested in a meetup while here?

Thanks for all the suggestions. 

here is a song i found on the radio while up there

Hi Architects.
Can you recommend a kit house company in Colorado that imports homes abroad? I live in Boulder and my friend from Israel wants to buy and build it in Israel.

If you go to Denver, absolute must: Sushi Den Omakase

Last time I was back my view had softened a bit... History Colorado is a nice building, and I now find Michael Graves Library delightful. The MCA and the associated office building around the corner (both by Adjaye) are not to be missed. The Clyfford Still museum is still awesome. I rather like the Blue Cross Blue Shield Building as well.  Union Station (both restoration and new train canopy) are great.

Most of the residential going up around downtown looks absolutely tragic. All the single family and condos going up in the Highlands are not much better.  But its all relative I suppose... I wonder if the market could or would support something different - a more sophisticated multi-family product?

A friend has been visiting who is a big beat poet fan so we've been retracing the steps of Kerouac, Cassady, and Ginsberg in Denver and suburbs. There's a sandwhich shop that I used to visit all the time and I would always look at that apartment building while eating my sandwich and it turns out Jack used to live there.