At One River North in Denver, Colorado, sky gardens, pastures, canyons, and waterfalls puncture the facade of what is seemingly just another curtain wall building. The 16-story apartment tower designed by MAD Architects opened this month, transforming Denver’s burgeoning skyline.
One River North contains 187 rental units. A 9,000-square-foot retail space anchors the ground plane. Ma Yansong, founder of MAD Architects, likened One River North to “living in a building yet feeling as though you’re immersed in a natural landscape—like living within a canyon itself.”
“Imagine our three-dimensional urban spaces,” Yansong continued, “where high-rise office buildings and high-rise hotels introduce sky gardens, canyons, and waterfalls. In this vision, the future city is not just made of concrete boxes anymore; it becomes a place that integrates and connects people with nature.”
Construction on the mixed-use project started in 2021, as reported by AN. The Max Collaborative, Uplands Real Estate Partners, and Wynne Yasmer Real Estate are all development partners on the project. Davis Partnership Architects, a local firm, served as executive architect.
The new building is sited in Denver’s River North Art District (RiNo), a former industrial area now replete with breweries, condos, and restaurants—a place GQ called “America’s most improbably cool neighborhood.” It was built opposite RiNo’s 38th and Blake RTD light rail station at 3930 Blake Street.
Floors six through nine at One River North are open to the elements, offering sweeping views of RiNo, and even the Rocky Mountains. These spaces, MAD Architects said, mimic national erosions, slot canyons, Colorado’s foothills, and canyon ecosystems.
Outdoor seating, shared rooms, and fitness facilities are interspersed throughout One River North’s open-air canyon. Cascading water can be heard even down at street level thanks to One River North’s aquatic elements. Curved handrails follow the openings’s profile, accentuating its mountain-like form.
The building’s exterior spaces are broken up into four different ecological zones. The usable roof echoes subalpine forests. Floors nine through 15 have fauna similar to montane shrubland and pinyon juniper woodland, while floors below have semi-desert shrub land.
Thanks to its accoutrements, One River North has earned Fitwel certification, a designation that’s been awarded to less than 1,000 buildings worldwide.
Inside, generous lounges, workspaces, a pet space, and a 3-level subterranean parking garage abound. The tower has a mix of one-, two-, and three-bedroom units that range from 625 to 2,500 square feet. Interior photographs show cavernous apartments that resemble cave dwellings.
The grotto-like walls and ceilings and the void itself evoke similar vignettes to those afforded by Studio Gang’s Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation.
One River North marks MAD Architects’s third completed project in the U.S. The other two were Garden House and Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, both in Los Angeles.
