1801 California Building

The 1801 California Building is a Postmodernist skyscraper designed by Metz, Train & Youngren, and built in 1983 in Denver, CO.

1801 California Building is not the only name you might know this building by though. It is common for companies to want to attach their names to iconic buildings when they move in, or for the general public to come up with nicknames, and this one is no exception. The building has changed names several times over the years, and is also known as:

• United Bank Center between 1983 and 1989.
• US West Tower between 1990 and 2000.
• Qwest Tower between 2000 and 2011.
• CenturyLink Tower between 2011 and 2015.
• 1801 California Building from 2015 until this day.

Its precise street address is 1801 Californa Street, Denver, CO. You can also find it on the map here.

The building underwent a major restoration in 2014. The architect commissioned to undertake this restoration was Weitz.

Metz, Train & Youngren was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design.

That being said, architecture is a complex discipline involving many professionals from different fields, without whom this building would have not been possible. We will surely be leaving out a lot of names here, but at the very least we know that there was one other part involved, that was Al Cohen Construction as the Main Contractor.

The 1801 California Building can be categorized as a Postmodernist building.

The 1801 California Building was completed in 1983. At that time Postmodernism was the prevailing style. Fresh, bold and daring, architects were exploring the freedom of designing without having to follow the strict, sometimes arbitrary rules of a specific architectural movement (which ironically became a movement itself). The 1801 California Building was therefore every much in line with what the architecture community, and the people liked and wanted at the time.

The 1801 California Building uses a framed tube-in-tube structure , with steel columns and concrete slabs.

A framed tube-in-tube structure uses a central core, known as inner tube, which usually holds stairs, lifts and installations, and a perimeter of columns around it, which form the exterior tube. The interior tube is tipically more massive (often made of reinforced concrete), and the exterior tube is "lighter" (made of steel or concrete columns). Both tubes are conencted via horizontal elements which make up the floors and also transmit any horizontal froces from the facade to the core.

The facade of the building is load bearing. This is a direct consequence of the integration of the exterior "tube" into the facade, something which most framed tube-in-tube buildings do in order to liberate the interior space from structural elements and achieve a more flexible interior.

So the facade of the builing is techinically load-bearing, yes, however, in between the load-bearing colums we find a curtain-wall type of facade, which by itself would not be cosnidered load-bearing.

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features a curtain wall facade system made up of brown precast concrete modules with large windows. It also features a stepped design with four setbacks. This design gives the building a distinctive profile. The shape of the building is composed of two interlocked octagonal sections that separate near the roof, adding to its architectural interest.