Sharing High-Tech Tools Creates Rocky Mountain High
Another starchitect. Another unfathomable form. Another potential money sinkhole. On the surface, architect Daniel Libeskind's Denver Art Museum addition, a 146,000-sq-ft titanium-skinned "geode," had all the ingredients for disaster. Except in the eyes of M.A. Mortenson Co., which had recently cut its teethor been through the meat grinderon the monarch of all description-defying U.S. architectural icons, Los Angeles' Walt Disney Concert Hall. Instead of running scared, Mortenson salivated at the prospect of turning the agonies of Disney into the ecstacy of DAM. It landed the $70-million job in August 2001.
By all reports, Mortenson has succeeded at DAM, despite the job's geometric complexity. "It's been a great project," says Lewis I. Sharp, the museum's director. "Having just come off Disney was a big plus for Mortenson," he says. "Rather than being frightened by the new technology, Mortenson knew it could be the means to pull this off."