The Lab: Small space, big idea

Art center in Lakewood looks like a promising experiment

Mary Voelz Chandler, Rocky Mountain News

Published May 29, 2006 at midnight

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The word "groovalicious" doesn't show up in any architectural dictionaries.

But for the director and architect working on the interior space that will become The Lab, it's a jokey catchphrase to describe the feeling, the atmosphere and the sensibility both want for the art center in Belmar.

"We can create a serious atmosphere because we don't take ourselves too seriously," said Adam Lerner, executive director of The Lab. The center was announced two years ago and has been organizing programming since then at adopted homes in Belmar.

Lerner extimated that about 4,000 people had attended the talks and workshops there since 2004; about 65 percent of them are from Denver.

Construction will begin soon to remake the 500-square-foot first-floor entry space and the 11,000-square-foot second floor of The Lab's building at 404 S. Upham St.

Now, it is an empty building in the evolving Belmar, where the first-floor windows are boarded up with placards for various merchants.

The goal: open in September with an exhibition, to augment the public programs that have been in place for two years. Publications will come later, Lerner said.

For the $1 million build-out, Lerner hired Hagy Belzberg, whose firm, Belzberg Architects, is based in Santa Monica, Calif.

Belzberg, who grew up in Los Angeles and returned there after earning his master of architecture degree from Harvard University, has designed numerous homes, as well as interiors for restaurants, including Patina, in Frank Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall.

"We chose Hagy because we wanted a creative partner, with a background of experience in several different kind of spaces," said Lerner, who moved to Denver from Baltimore in 2003 to become the first master teacher in the Denver Art Museum's Department of Modern and Contemporary Art.

The museum and the developers of Belmar helped start The Lab, and though Lerner is now executive director, he still serves as affiliate curator of experimental programs at the DAM.

"It's a small space with a big idea," said Belzberg of his commission and The Lab's mission. "I've never seen this type of reaching out to cross information, to create a dialogue through contradiction." He envisions the place as less museum than laboratory, with space for exhibitions, lectures, a lounge, and a 2,000-square-foot-plus second-floor patio.

"The goal is flexibility," he said, "fluid but functional."

In the first-floor lobby area, Belzberg has proposed a glass staircase and curved white entry wall with an amorphic form protruding into the space. (The plans have been approved by various parties involved, including the Plaza Metropolitan District, which helps fund The Lab's annual budget of about $750,000.)

Upstairs, the challenge is to figure out how to turn a space with high ceilings and copious windows into a place to see art - among other things.

A portion may become a "box within a box" so windows do not need to be covered but allowing for intimacy in viewing work.

Much of Belmar follows a strict design code, making for a heavy dose of conformity. But in what Belzberg calls "the adaptive reuse" of The Lab's space - especially that from-the-street view of the curvy entry, "When people walk by, this will look different. They'll say, 'What the hell is that?'"

Mary Voelz Chandler is the art and architecture critic. Chandlerm@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-2677.

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