The most distinguishing characteristic of Colorado Springs, about an hour’s drive south of Denver, isn’t in the city. It’s Pikes Peak, the 14,115-foot-high mountain that rises dramatically to the west and dominates the landscape. Wisely, the New York firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R) embraced the granite pile in its design of the $91 million U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Museum. “It became the defining feature of our initial site plan,” says DS+R partner in charge Benjamin Gilmartin. “It’s a constant reminder that you’re in this breathtaking, Olympic-class setting.”
Located in a former light-industrial area on the edge of downtown, the three-story museum sits on a 1.7-acre triangular parcel of land overlooking an active railyard. The approach from downtown takes you due west, on a city street that dead-ends at the museum site. That was the most obvious setting for the museum, Gilmartin says, but the building would have blocked the view of Pikes Peak. Instead, the architects decided to frame the mountain by splitting the museum into two parts: a soaring main building to the south and a smaller, more earthbound structure with a café to the north. The space in between comprises a plaza that doubles as an informal amphitheater.
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