MAD Architects has completed One River North in Denver; a 16-story scheme defined by a “cracked-open canyon” running across its glazed facade. A mixed-use development in the city’s River North Art District, the scheme contains rental apartments and retail spaces.
The high-rise scheme features a “canyon trail” running from the 6th to the 9th floor inspired by Colorado's foothills and canyons. According to MAD, the element creates a “vertical landscape for its residents to wander as if hiking in the mountains.”
The four-story canyon serves as an amenity space for residents, with over 13,000 square feet of landscaped terraces. Among the features across the canyon are outdoor seating, shared rooms, fitness facilities, water elements, and city views. From its mid-tower base, the canyon continues to climb across the building’s facade to a rooftop landscaped terrace. Inspired by its alpine context, the roof terrace features a pool, spa, and garden with views of the Rocky Mountains and Denver skyline.
"Imagine living in a building yet feeling as though you're immersed in a natural landscape—like living within a canyon itself," MAD founder Ma Yansong said about the scheme. "Imagine our three-dimensional urban spaces, where high-rise office buildings and high-rise hotels introduce sky gardens, canyons, and waterfalls. In this vision, the future city is not just made of concrete boxes anymore; it becomes a place that integrates and connects people with nature."
Inside, the building contains 187 rental units across 15 floors, along with a 9,000-square-foot ground-floor retail space. According to MAD, the retail space “seamlessly blends into the surrounding landscape and streetscape” with exterior materials and plantings that flow into the interior.
The scheme becomes MAD’s first completed residential rental project in North America, having broken ground in late 2021. Earlier this year, we covered construction progress on the project, including the installation of the facade’s glass panels.
The tower was delivered for The MAX Collective, with MAD providing architectural design, and Davis Partnership Architects serving as Executive Architect alongside landscape and interior design.
News of the tower’s completion comes in the same month that MAD topped its Fenix Museum of Migration in Rotterdam with its defining spiral stair. Last month, Ma Yansong teamed up with FENDI for a new ergonomic fashion collection while, in July, MAD unveiled a bubble-shaped installation to revive a historic house in the Japanese countryside.
17 Comments
This makes me feel some kind of way...
It feels like US corporate architecture fractured with a Fred Flintstone interior revealed. How lovely
Except for where the round columns and the partition walls pierce the cave and are inexplicably painted the same color.
Great point. They should have really kept those part of the corporate architecture shell.
Weird
I like the concept. I think it would be more akin to a sandstone canyon if the forms weren't so rounded.
I think man made nature is hard to pull off at scale with the stucco or shotcrete approach. Ref also the AMNH Gilder Center by Studio Gang.
I would agree.
I've said it before, Why does MAD not include it in their website? are they ashamed of the results? Archinect should do a follow up story in 5 years to see how it's holding up. Besides my disliking it, have you seen the prices for renting here? https://onerivernorth.com/floo...
$4,900 for a 2B2B unit in denver is super steep, no? Even in LA, it would be probably $4,200
That is a whole lot of money to live in an extremely mediocre city.
You don't move to CO for the cities. You move here for the outdoors. Oddly enough - Denver is one of the top five cites most people in the US move to.
a whole lot of money to live next to a train track and a highway. OA, I would say for the past 10 years people moved to CO for the weed, a trend that's fading while other states legalize recreational. Denver is a weird city nonetheless, have you seen the traffic leaving west on a friday or saturday morning?
Oh I know.
I don't think it's just for the weed though. If I recall, the slowdown is due to the high cost of living / low housing availability. Then again, I don't smoke weed so what do I know.
I don't live in the Denver area specifically because of the I-70 traffic. I chose the western slope for the lower cost of living, higher pay, less traffic, and better access to wild places.
The representation of a “cracked-open canyon” is too literal and detracts from what might have been a more suggestive building. We look inside and say, "hey there's a canyon!"—and stop, perhaps disappointed at how much it does not look like a canyon. The literalness closes our imagination. I fear Denver will soon tire of this. And, as others have said, the canyon is too goopy. Better on the interior something complex, abstract and hard-edged, in keeping with and pulling away from the exterior.
Compare with the suggestive and enduring subtlety of D S + R's CCAT.
I agree. It seems a bit too literal. To be fair, the initial renderings of building didn't look like this. I suspect the built CCAT will not look much like the renderings either.
Designing a metaphor when a simile would have worked better.
I actually think it's one of the things that distinguishes REM's "good" apprentices from the "great" ones. You have to be able to let your concept take flight and become a building. Especially when your concept is a canyon or other naturalistic feature like we've seen two recent OMA graduates do.
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