Welcome

Everyone has a favorite memory of a performing arts facility. Maybe it's the first time you walked across a stage to look down at your beaming parents during the first-grade school play, or a wonderful chamber music concert you enjoyed at an ornate century-old theater.

I have three: Seeing Aida at the Baths of Caracalla in Rome (complete with live elephants and camels and gorgeous ruins in the background); watching Rudolf Nureyev perform at Adler and Sullivan's Auditorium Theatre in Chicago; and then there's the Rolling Stones, in a double bill with Stevie Wonder at Chicago's International Amphitheatre (the place was a big, noisy dump, but we had front-row seats for $6.50).

I'll admit, I've aged myself here. I'm not sure if elephants and camels are still allowed to tromp through Rome's fragile archaeological monument. Nureyev has long since passed from this life, and front-row seats for those AARP rockers go for at least 100 times what I paid in high school.

Nonetheless, performances and performing arts facilities make indelible impressions on us all, lasting memories. In this issue, we're featuring three recently completed performing arts facilities in our region, each serving a very specific purpose and each certain to be part of someone's most memorable experiences. The Blue Man Group Theater in Las Vegas was designed to house the outrageous props of that iconic, silent, royal-blue trio. In Peoria, Arizona, the Peoria Center for the Performing Arts marks a community's coming of age and, perhaps, the beginning of a young actor's career. The Kent Denver School Student Center for the Arts in Englewood, Colorado was designed to be an inclusive facility where everyone can take part in learning fine and performing arts.

This issue's "Design For All" also continues on that theme of inclusive cultural facilities, spotlighting Denver Art Museum's design commitment to making the artwork accessible to all, in certain areas going above and beyond ADA requirements for public buildings. The museum's new building was designed by Daniel Libeskind, in association with Denver's Davis Partnership Architects, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary. Read more about them in "Swatches."

Finally, our "Green Scene" column is moving indoors by spotlighting the new sustainable-furnishings movement in this issue and featuring Associates III in our next issue. This Denver interiors firm literally wrote the book on green interior design and has transformed itself into quite possibly the greenest design business in town.

Photograph by Elliot Lincis