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This is not the story I thought it would be based on that title!

"The “crack” in the façade, which covers 10 storeys, is a reference to Colorado’s dramatic mountain scenery." So it's designed to look like it has this crazy crack in it. I wonder what that'll look like in real life, the renders are... interesting.

I figured this was another building that's in danger of falling like San Francisco’s slowly cracking up Millennium Tower.

Reading the headline and seeing the image for the first time, I legitimately thought the building was cracked and broken in real life and doomed. Looks pretty neat once I realized what it really was.
I am reminded of the BEST stores, many of which were designed to look like they were falling apart or unfinished:

https://www.archdaily.com/778003/the-intersection-of-art-and...

Disappointed that there were atleast two in Richmond and I never saw the interesting one.

There was a Best right down the street and it was my favorite store as a kid to explore, but it was in a generic strip mall. Spent a lot of time there playing the Sega Genesis display.

neat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Best_Products#More_Histor...

> … An order was written up and turned into one of the service desks and sent to the warehouse in a plastic tube "shot" through a pneumatic line. The tube was opened by an order picker who read the catalog numbers on the order slip which told the picker where the merchandise was located in the warehouse. It was picked, the slip was attached to the product, it was sent down a roller belt where a carbon copy of the order slip was given to a cashier who paiged the shopper to the register. The transaction was completed and the customer took the receipt to the pick up area and received their product when they were ready to leave the store. Seems like alot of work, but the entire process was done in less than five minutes time. …

The trees and greenery make for a beautiful render, but I'm reminded of this article from 2013, "Can we please stop drawing trees on top of skyscrapers?"

https://www.archdaily.com/346374/can-we-please-stop-drawing-...

None of the depicted trees appear to be native to the region either. Tropical looking vegetation will look very out of place in Denver, and will be resource and time intensive to maintain, assuming it can actually survive exposed. This building looks like it was designed for Singapore, and doesn't do anything to aesthetically connect to the region.
Also article and podcast episode on 99% invisible: Renderings vs. Reality: The Improbable Rise of Tree-Covered Skyscrapers

https://99percentinvisible.org/article/renderings-vs-reality...

Go visit Singapore. Tree-covered skyscrapers are reality there.

Probably has something to do with being a rainy tropical island, of course.

The finished building will look nothing like the renders. The "crack" that's shown in all the renders as filled with lush greenery faces north. It will be in permanent shade. If they actually do plant all those trees, they'll be dead within months.
Maybe the builders are capable of doing a 10 second web search to discover trees that grow in shade: https://www.thespruce.com/twelve-trees-for-full-shade-326967...?
All good, they'll just put one of these across the street: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20_Fenchurch_Street
If you hike in temperate, mountainous areas, you'll find the greenest areas are on the north slopes (in the northern hemisphere—in other words, the shady side). Maybe not with the plants in the renders, but making it green shouldn't be a problem.
There are plenty of tree and plant choices that don't need direct sunlight. Denver is a sunny city, with the right choices it will be green and thrive.
It looks like to the south of the building is the river. They probably optimized that side for residential units to increase profits.

That being said, they could always use massive lights to keep the trees alive...

This can be said for nearly every architectural rendering. They aren’t used by architects to build/design, they are used by sales to sell.
Shade is more constant than sun, so effectively this makes the end result much more predictable and less maintenance intensive.
Plenty of plants can grow in shade. And if you look at the render of the facade, it's not completely opaque...
They can always get plastic plants from IKEA.
Here's an article on the technical challenges of a different treed building, Italy's Bosco Verticale:

https://global.ctbuh.org/resources/papers/download/2099-a-ne...

The weight of the soil and water isn't negligible, but it's not that bad. Most plants will grow happily in a tiny fraction of their root volume in nature, as long as precise irrigation delivers water (or fertilizer solution) just as it's needed. The practical root volume is probably chosen mostly based on the longest expected fault in the irrigation system.

The tiny root system also provides a very weak attachment to the building. Bosco Verticale strapped each tree to a vertical steel cable, plus various additional restraints.

I live outside of Denver, and I find this concept to be extremely exciting at an architectural level.

That being said, it will be interesting to see how well the greenery in the "crack" will hold up to the extremely dry climate, as well as the extreme temperature swings in the area. I'm assuming they will use native species, which are amazingly hardy. Ponderosa pines and other tree species (Colorado Blue Spruce, etc) are known world-wide in the bonsai community for their extreme hardiness. I can drive 5 minutes west from my house and find excellent yamadori without walking more than 5 minutes from where I parked my car. Based on my experience with the extreme winds we get, especially on exposed, elevated building facades, I don't think anything other than native species will survive.

I'm really looking forward to seeing this, although it's not clear I'll be able to get into the building, lol.

It'd be really interesting to see how they will support all of this.

The big reason green roofs are not very common is because dirt, particularly wet dirt, gets really heavy, as do any sizeable plants.

Trees don't easily grow in the Denver climate so yeah I wonder how well the trees will do, too. I live like 15 minutes south of downtown and none of the trees around me look particularly healthy. If I drive east towards Brighton or Elizabeth I'll see like 1 random tree growing out of a creek but otherwise it's all shrubs
I'm curious as to why more high rise buildings don't incorporate "park floors" or large balconies. The walls are non-structural after all so you could push them further into the building and have an open air space. You could add extra headroom by making those floor taller as well.

Is it simply a cost issue? Everyone is just trying to maximize "livable area" at the expense of not making the structure itself more livable?

Cost, and also practicality. Most of the "green building" plans that you see come from artists with no knowledge of construction or engineering working in 3D programs where everything is weightless, and all building materials are free and have infinite strength.

Trees are heavy. Assuming a fairly mature tree with a 10-inch diameter trunk and around 20 feet of height, the wood alone weighs around 800 pounds, and that's before you consider the soil that the tree sits in (100 lbs per cubic foot, so at least a ton for the whole planter) or the water that it needs (100 gallons per week ~800 pounds)

Yes, just a cost issue. The park floors is a really good idea, especially for very high density city developments.

I had some ideas in similar thrust to yours, I think it's worth following up on.

One of the cooler things you could do is space the floor plates so that you give people berths in a building. They then install walls and possibly a subfloor and run utilities. If they want to leave the space open they can, if they want to cut it up into rooms they can.

My building has this, and so do two others in my neighborhood in the unfashionable East Bay. These are all buildings that are 20+ floors. There’s a outdoor space on the top “parking” decks. Then the actual towers are set back on a smaller floor plate. Then there’s outdoor space on the roof deck of the tower.

Not sure what the value to residents in shaded mid-floor outdoor space, vs having sun-filled decks in places that make structural sense. Mid floor parks are just an aesthetic embellishment for people outside the building.

The HN title makes no sense. It should be either "Work begins on MAD Architects’ cracked Denver residential tower" or "Work begins on cracked Denver residential tower"
I feel like this can look gorgeous and thought provoking if people manage to keep the greenery looking as-intended.

I wonder if they do worst case renderings too or if they just focus entirely on their art project.

they're going to have to pump in stupendous amounts of water to keep that much plant life green, 6 to 16 stories up off the ground, in colorado. hopefully they can at least use the building's own greywater or something.
I was expecting this to be a disaster/engineering story. A classic in that genre is the 1995 story in the New Yorker about the Citicorp building: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1995/05/29/the-fifty-nine...
I wish there'd be more architects avoiding using full-glass facade. This design looks interesting, but (at least to me) somewhat disturbing. Yes, they make the "artistic" statement, but we're not talking about a picture in a gallery, this is going to be visible by a lot of people and for a long time. The urban environment is affecting people, so I think they should be more careful with these experiments... https://geneticsofdesign.com/2019/07/27/how-bostons-glassy-s... In the surrounding sea of glass (including three large spaces on the same building) the crack looks really out of place, and draws the attention too much, It's also not regular, which fights against our desire for uniformity. Just feels very out of place, at least to me. Interesting nonetheless, but I wouldn't want to look at it every day for years... :)
Reminds me of the Viñoly office tower in Amsterdam, although that has a straight crack spiraling around the building:

https://www.brandveiligmetstaal.nl/upload/Image/projecten/pr...

I must admit, I do like the design, but why don't we get buildings where the crack style extends to the whole structure? I can think of 1000's of artist renders of what the architecture of the future will look like (eg. https://www.yankodesign.com/images/design_news/2020/04/25979...), but I can't think of one building when I've seen it put into practice. I've seen much less feasible designs engineering wise made into reality. Why are these "utopic" buildings left to fiction?
it’s the Frank Lloyd Wright curse: his houses are beautiful but maintenance nightmares - the first time you build a new design, it’s going to leak. as soon as you get creative, you’ll get seams that settle and crack in unpredictable ways.

cubes are not the strongest form (rhombic dodecahedrons are better) but it’s not the weakest form either, you start playing with acute and obtuse angles you might come up with something fragile. best to stick with right angles.

I turn my nose up at rectangular buildings as much as the next guy (my house, at least, is an octagon) but we’ve become very skilled at building rectangles that don’t leak / collapse.

Because they're dramatically more expensive than standard rectangular prisms for comparatively little benefit and significantly less usable/sellable square feet per acre.
In other news, the UK government rejected the London "Tulip" skyscraper: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-59253160 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46259419
Looks good, but always when I see stuff like this I just think functionally it's just for show. I'm function over form every time.

What's it going to look it in 10/20 years. I feel the "inspired by nature" bit is non-sense. There's better ways of "surrounding yourself by nature" that is more functional and not as gimmicky.

"The nature-inspired design by MAD Architects was influenced by C̶o̶l̶o̶r̶a̶d̶o̶’̶s̶ ̶l̶e̶g̶e̶n̶d̶a̶r̶y̶ ̶l̶a̶n̶d̶f̶o̶r̶m̶s̶ ̶ Singapore."
Am I the only one who thinks: just make the whole facade trees/greenery?
I don't think it'll be very green green Denver's winters.
Concept is fine, but I can't imagine this surviving Denver winters.
MAD Architects? Am I the only one who thinks of potrzebie?
Reminds me more of an avant garde design by BIG than MAD.
The 1990s had Frank Gehry. This is the next generation.
I wonder if this building will have issues with water damage 25 years from now.
This kind of architecture is absolutely cringe-y. The architects basically out themselves as detached sociopaths, and the patrons out themselves as gullible idiots.

A building like this is a shtick. "Cool" for about 5 minutes. It will not age gracefully. The people behind this project confuse architecture with sculpture.

My first thought upon seeing the rendering: a giant jagged gash in a building reminds me of September 11th. Not the kind of thing I would want to see every day...