Denver Botanic Garden's pyramid points toward its future

The Denver Botanic Gardens gets credit for bringing the city closer to nature, but its reverence for man-made objects has been equally important over the years. The gardens' buildings were designed by a who's who of the city's best architects.

Jules Jacques Benedict's 1922 Waring House with its graceful Tudor touches. The boldly modernist Boettcher Conservatory, created by Victor Hornbein and Edward D, White Jr. in 1966. David Owen Tryba's remarkable 2009 parking garage, fully integrated into the landscape. These are some of Denver's superstar structures.

The Denver Botanic Gardens has undergone several changes to its space, including the new $6 million Science Pyramid next to the sunken concert area. (Cyrus McCrimmon, The Denver Post)

Ben Niamthet's new Science Pyramid recognizes the tradition and understands what makes it great. The overall shape the pyramid is nearly as old as architecture itself. But like the designers before him, Niamthet tapped present-day engineering and aesthetic ideas to make it a building of its time.

The pyramid concept was actually the gardens' idea, specified in guidelines sent out for the design competition Niamthet won. Its master plan overseen by Tryba called for the form as a complement to both the classical statues and fountains that dot the 24-acre grounds, and the giant, flat-sided bowl next to it where the gardens presents its popular summer concert series.

The pyramid is an inversion of the bowl as if the mass that was within it was scooped out in one swoop and laid on its back.

Niamthet had his own ideas for a building that could house whiz-bang displays that teach about plant life in remote parts of the world. He conjured a 5,000-square-foot structure that appears to be rising out of the ground like a mountain, pressed into being by the grind of the Earth's tectonic plates. Like many of Colorado's tallest ridges, the building has an irregular outline; it is fractured down the middle, a design move that allowed for an uninterrupted slot of daylight to enter the building

The new modern bistro The Hive is next to the Monet Pool at the gardens.

"We didn't want to it to become just a four-sided triangle," said Niamthet, a principal at Denver's Burkett Design. "We wanted to make it something a little abstract to fit in with current architecture."

Niamthet "pushed and pulled" his pyramid into an object with 17 facets. It looks different from every angle and even takes on a ship-like bearing as it slips into the pond that surrounds it on the west side.

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Denver Botanic Garden's pyramid points toward its future