Confluence was featured prominently Sunday in the Business section of the Coloradoan, in a feature on buildings that are reshaping Fort Collins, alongside other projects that are revitalizing the River District. We've received lots of positive feedback on the article, so thank you! If you haven't read it yet, you can find it at the Coloradoan's website, or if you'd like more information on the project, check out our project page or go straight to the Confluence site. 

Presales are going on now, with units going fast!

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We are excited to announce that residential units in Confluence are now available for presale! More information about presales and the commercial spaces available for lease is available at the updated project website. We have also added a few new renderings to our project page. We will have additional information about the individual units (and additional images) in the coming weeks, so check back soon!

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We had the drone out for some context photos for Confluence and decided that it was such a nice day we'd put together a few quick shots of Block One...

Poudre Garage LLC hosted a ground-breaking ceremony Tuesday at the project site at Remington and Oak in Old Town Fort Collins. Renovations to the interior of the historic Forest Service garage have already begun, and work on footings and foundations for the addition is scheduled to begin shortly.

David Diehl, one of the company's principals, said a few words, thanking the Downtown Development Authority for their contribution to the project, which he indicated made a big impact in the quality of the exterior materials that the project budget could accommodate.

It has been a fun and productive collaboration with the owner, and we are excited to see the project beginning to be realized! More information about the project is available at our project page, and we will provide updates as soon as a leasing website is available.

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[au]workshop is thrilled to announce that the world-renowned Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group will be operating the Mana'olana Place Hotel and Residences as the Mandarin Oriental, Honolulu.

A few selections from the Mandarin Oriental and Salem Partners press releases:

“We are delighted with this opportunity to open a hotel in Honolulu and look forward to bringing Mandarin Oriental’s legendary hospitality back to Hawaii,” said James Riley, Group Chief Executive of Mandarin Oriental. “This new development will be a welcome addition to the brand’s expansion around the world,” he added.

“We are proud to bring the award-winning Mandarin Oriental brand to Honolulu,” said James Ratkovich of Salem Partners. “Mandarin Oriental, Honolulu will set a new standard for luxury service in the islands and will offer a preferred choice to travelers and potential homeowners who desire the finest accommodation,” he added. “We look forward to revitalizing this area at the gateway to Waikiki with the first TOD project in the city and bringing jobs, economic benefits, housing and a world-class hotel to Honolulu.”

Arrival Rotunda

View of Tower from Above Kapiolani Boulevard

View from Outside the Makai Penthouse

Looking Diamond Head

View from Mauka Penthouse Kitchen

Mauka Penthouse Kitchen

Mauka Penthouse Living Area

Luxury Guestroom Bath and Makai Facade

Hotel Pool Deck and Lounge

Hotel Pool Cabanas

Hotel Pool Deck

Resident Amenity Deck

We are excited to have the privilege to continue to work closely with the Mandarin group as the project continues to develop. 

For more information about the project, please see our project page, or the Mandarin Oriental or Salem Partners press releases.

We are extremely excited to be able to announce another project that we've been hard at work on in Honolulu! We have begun having community meetings and are in the process of developing the project further with a potential hotel operator. 

From our project narrative: 

1500 Kapiolani Boulevard is located in urbanized Honolulu, along a tree-lined boulevard which links downtown with Waikiki. The site is within a recently designated transit oriented district, which raises the allowable FAR to 10.0 in order to increase walkability and discourage automobile dependency.

In this context, our client asked us to design an iconic 400 foot tower (the height ceiling) combining street-oriented retail, a four star hotel and complementary housing, with the goal of capitalizing on views over and around existing buildings in all directions. 

Our solution focuses on a simple massing and an iconic form befitting the prestige of Kapiolani Boulevard, distinctly visible from Kahnamoku Lagoon, the Ala Moana Mall, and other areas of the city.  We created two separate small-footprint towers—allowing the overall mass to be oriented Mauka-Makai (Mountains-to-Ocean as desired by island residents) preserving view corridors and breeze patterns. For residents, the two-tower scheme maximizes views and cross-ventilation, as well as value: all eight units per typical level are corner units.

The central design move was to maximize usable common and private open space and create actively programmed spaces on multiple datums, culminating in a lushly-landscaped sky garden bridge/platform for building residents at 350’ in the air, indexing the city’s previous height limit. This sky garden metaphorically replaces a ground level context lost when Oahu urbanized and reconnects the site to the horizon

Hawaii’s mild climate and pleasant breezes are woven into the scheme at every turn with the goal of dissolving the barrier between conditioned and exterior space. At higher floors, breezes are mitigated with appropriately placed massing. This is evident at the hotel floors which link the towers, creating a natural wind eddy at the podium, and at the sky garden, where building mass and landscape elements shield the gathering spaces.

Open space/green space is a central focus on vertical and horizontal surfaces in our solution. In fact, as shown in the image above, the cumulative horizontal intensive and extensive open space is nearly 2.3 times the site area and is complemented with additional vertical gardens on multiple surfaces.

This project is scheduled to begin construction in late 2017.

More information is available at the project's page.  We are hard at work continuing the design process and we will continue to post updates, so keep an eye on the blog!

[au]workshop architects+urbanists has just been selected to design new offices, volunteer work spaces, a central kitchen and warehouses for the Food Bank for Larimer County.  The new facilities will be located in an as-yet-to-be-announced location. 

We are more than pleased to be able to provide architectural services for this fine organization whose mission is to provide food to all in need through community partnerships and hunger relief programs.

The Food Bank for Larimer County believes no one should be hungry and their dream is to deliver health, hope and humanity to stabilize the lives of their clients and build a vibrant community. They are a private non-profit organization and the only Feeding America clearinghouse for donated food in the county.  Each year, the Food Bank for Larimer County provides food to nearly 36,000 people in need through community partnerships and hunger-relief programs.  Visit their website for more information. 

"EmQuartier has raised the stakes to such a point that the world’s biggest luxury groups have felt it necessary to make a pilgrimage..."

"...arguably becoming the most important urban redevelopment project in Southeast Asia..."

--Tyler Brûlé, The Financial Times, April 10, 2015

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/608dda3c-de9f-11e4-b9ec-00144feab7de.html#axzz3X7AxMfRX

The River District Block One Mixed Use project includes a four-story mixed use building over one level of structured parking at the intersection of Linden Street and the Poudre River in Fort Collins, CO. As a catalyst project for Fort Collins’ River District, the ground floor will have space for a restaurant at the north end of the building (closest to the Poudre River and will be the only place in Fort Collins to have a meal and have a view the river) and office / retail space in the remaining space along Linden Street as well as an additional office / retail space on the lower level that will overlook the river. The second floor will be entirely occupied by Encompass Technologies. The third and fourth floors will be residential with one unit having a mezzanine level that will have some spectacular views to the North and East.

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early aerial illustration looking south over the Poudre River

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block one mixed use site pano

After two years of our team working diligently with the City of Fort Collins,  we have all of the necessary permits in place and Brinkman Construction has started working on the Block One Mixed Use project. View corridors have been established, clearing of batch plant spoils is underway and dirt is being removed from the building footprint.

More updates to come.