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Denver Councilwoman Susan Barnes-Gelt Strives to Make Built Environment More Dynamic
Denver, CO (2001) - If Denver Councilwoman Susan Barnes-Gelt had her way, she’d make the city a place where people walk around town saying “Eureka! Eureka!” at every corner. That’s the effect she thinks architecture and the built environment ought to have on people. “Unfortunately, most of the time it doesn’t do that,” she said. “Too much of what we’ve built here lately has confirmed my suspicion that locally our built environment is secondary, temporary and not very natural. We look at it as a throw-away.” Never one to mince words, Barnes-Gelt – who was re-elected to her second term on the Denver City Council in 1999 – has been on somewhat of a masonry crusade during her civic tenure. “We ought to do better; we must do better,” she said, referring to her often-stated view that today’s architects and builders are not using enough natural, sustainable materials in their local projects. “We don’t have strong vernacular architecture yet in Colorado, or if we do, it’s more on a residential model. Our urban design has taken some serious and positive strides in the right direction lately, and land-planning has advanced too. But our architecture and use of materials has not kept up.” However, Barnes-Gelt does not place that responsibility solely with the design community. “Policy-makers need to help them,” she said, “by passing standards they can use with their clients.” She credits Aurora for its passage of a sustainable materials ordinance. “It’s going to take more municipalities like Aurora – where they’ve taken their calcium – to pass these masonry ordinances as a catalyst to positive design. And we could do it here in Denver, too, if we just would.”
Barnes-Gelt sees the recent explosive growth along Colorado’s Front Range as an opportunity to make significant changes in the public’s perception of the built environment. “They see sprawl and traffic and it makes them cranky – it makes me cranky too. So people are beginning to look at their communities in a different way. They’ve traveled to Europe and they like the built environment there because it has stability, elegance and history behind it. Over there, you have retail outlets in 500-year-old buildings. I think we can use this kind of awareness as an opportunity to do some broad public education here about the value of sustainable design and materials.” Barnes-Gelt said that the foundation for these changes must encompass everyone who contributes to the built environment, including public officials, and in particular, some of her colleagues on the city council. “Some of them aren’t very knowledgeable about good vs. bad materials either. But, really,” she said, “this all has to happen at the same time. It works like a tripod: policy-makers and urban designers, architects and materials. And none of them stands up without the others.” Mostly, however, she throws the gauntlet at the feet of the architectural community. “Architects should take a stand and just refuse to design with bad materials. I know they’re under pressure from their clients to save money, but no one is saving money in the long run if we don’t use good materials to build good buildings that can be easily maintained. Time and money should not be the number one and two priorities on a public project. That should be design and quality of materials.” “You know, we ought to pass an ordinance requiring architects and contractors to put their names right on the front door of the buildings they build; then we’d see the quality go up. But,” she added, “in fairness, you don’t get a great building without a great client either.”
Part of her campaign to improve quality includes educating people about what materials not to use and why. “You’re never going to get durable, beautiful structures by building them with Spamstone,” she said. Spamstone is Barnes-Gelt’s derisive, collective name for any non-natural materials, like EIFS (synthetic stucco). “There’s too much of that all over this area, especially in some residential areas, like Cherry Creek North. A hailstorm could wipe out that area and only those beautiful little brick bungalows would still be standing. No one would miss the rest of it anyway.” Barnes-Gelt admits that not every construction project can be saved just with the addition of masonry, but “that almost always adds some art to it,” she said. “It doesn’t really matter what the material is – fieldstone, sandstone, brick, granite – as long as it’s natural. “I love buildings made with materials you want to touch, ones that eat the light and give it back to you, and that’s what masonry does.”
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