ABOUT THIS PROJECT

The Denver Federal Center is the largest collection of federal agencies outside of Washington D.C.  It encompasses more than 1 square mile of land, with 90 buildings housing more than 4,000,000 square feet of work space. 26 federal agencies employ more than 6,200 federal workers, on a campus that was originally the Denver Ordnance Plant during WW II.  

Located in the Denver suburb of Lakewood, it is bordered on 3 sides by residential properties.  Thanks to perimeter fencing and a lot of barbed wire, it has had the reputation as an “Area 51” kind of federal site, unwelcoming to its neighbors and not a public destination .  As a national effort to soften the reputation of federal facilities, GSA funded a “First Impressions” program to create a more welcoming architectural identity for their sites. At the DFC, public facilities include USGS, that supplies topo hiking maps to the public, and the National Archives, that have a historical library.

In partnership with Gensler Associates, the DFC program was designed to reflect both the

site architecture and the Front Range landscape of the site.