This is a grab box...

... of pictures taken at home looking for still-life and of architecture while walking around the University of Colorado Anschutz medical campus (what used to be the Fitzsimons Army Medical Center). Click any picture to see it full-size; the detail can be quite impressive!

While touring around home, obviously easy objects at hand were found at first. All are objects from our land, or nearly. We have a box of pine cones awaiting sales on Etsy; yes people will buy pretty pine cones apparently. And we have numerous deer sheds which have been curated from walking around the land and needing a home for now. The little plant however was found growing as an "escaped ornamental" when weeding Canda Thistle on a road leading to our land; we think it is the noxious weed Dalmatian Toadflax.

Walking around a young university campus is always strange. Landscaping is very orderly. It feels less of a comfortable park and more of a clinical institution. Public art at universities is also often very institutional and does not simply blend into the background but demands notice. Further, unless a university chock-a-block with undergraduates running between classes - certainly not the case now during COVID - they can be very eerie. The CU Anschutz campus is certainly like this with no undergrads and maybe few classes even held where I tend to frequent.

One landmark which can not be missed at the CU Anschutz campus is the foreboding main hospital from its Fitzsimons days. The building is massive, having been the world's largest military hospital at one time and center to the 600 building, 3,500 bed Fitzsimons Army Medical Center and now still central in the CU Anschutz campus. Further, the building's style is quite old coming from the late 1930's and looking like something one would expect of a World War II relic. Now-a-days, the building is seemingly well maintained; however, when I started going here it was still very obviously suffering neglect which made it all the more ominous. I still enjoy the eerie and ominous pale the building can cast as it has certainly seen many an ominous and eerie story's victims having hopefully been here well treated. The hospital has seen many Tuberculosis and amputee patients in its day. Now it is a hive of administration -- which can be plenty eerie and ominous in its own right.

With thoughts of modern and sleek glass buildings and an ominous, eerie and foreboding master around which they all circle, let's dive into the area of the Barbara Davis Center for Diabetes and its neighboring environment. Though now shot in digital at 34 mega-pixels, film would be most appropriate to capture the Barbara Davis Center and surroundings. The Center's namesake is Barbara Davis the matron of the Marvin Davis-family. Marvin, a one time resident of Denver where he and his Dad developed their fortune in oil-and-gas before turning his eyes to other business such as once purchasing 20th Century Fox and then helping their son start Davis Entertainment -- maker of block-buster Hollywood movies. Further, the Davis' enjoyed a massive Beverley Hills mansion purchased from Kenny Rogers and were well known for their parties meaning many of the donors and advisers for the Barbara Davis center are, through their work, media legends such as Kenny G, Stevie Wonder, Neil Diamond, Tony Danza, Phil Collins, Michael Bolton, Jay Leno, Roger Moore, Lionel Richie, Steven Spielberg and Kate Capshaw.

The parking lot that is the usual entrance to the Barbara Davis center was when first built desolate; in Summer it was hot with decorative rocks and sandwiched between two tall and cold, very square, flat glassed buildings. However, as the car park has now aged, it is starting to fill-in nicely, with trees, bushes and those decorative rocks are now a nice compliment on a cold and gray Winter's day.

The Barbara Davis Center is one of the friendlier buildings not being just a flat-sided box on all four sides as many of its contemporaries. The chill imparted by the neighboring architecture is somewhat impressive making the steely sun-awnings of the Barbara Davis center a welcome additions to area's architectural vernacular. So impersonal and sterile are the neighboring buildings that its parking lot mate is named Research Complex I South Tower. This being seemingly intentional and nondescript as the building's project completion webpage has the appropriate wording: "The space is largely generic and general as opposed to unique laboratory space." Its walls invite gazing for the sheer number of bricks which make it up and the endless, identical, cold windows which ensure its endless reconfigurability for otherwise quiet and un-named to the outside projects.

Art along the way

The art of the CU Anschutz Medical Center Campus near the Barbara Davis Center is quite geometric. Many a sphere is involved with some in the negative (space) and one of interesting construction is nothing alike the remaining 1200 feet of exhibit. It is called "Corpus Callosum: the bundle of nerves which link the two hemispheres of the brain."

An interesting thing I noticed was that each negative space construct had power boxes on them. Upon flipping one box open I found a very distraught spider and two power outlets. I found this curious but figured perhaps some public performance support was mandated into the original request-for-proposal (e.g. to run public-address speakers). These negative space voids also make for comfortable seating; one was used to support me in my shot of the Barbara Davis Center building. The artist, Thomas Sayre, explains on his website that the power is intended not for institutional use but public use for those using the void "rooms" to power their mobile devices. While I was not there at night, apparently the top of each void also provides lighting as well, making for quite the nice "room" for being out doors and all.

I am lost as to how the steely cage fits into the very organic designs he created for the remainder of the project; maybe to liken the difference of the brain's creative and analytic hemispheres but if so, it would seem this brain takes a much more Eastern bent in its thinking? The steel ball is the only object of its kind and on the Western side of the piece.

Now done with the pleasantries...

... we approach the old and eerie via the side of the Main Hospital. It is very imposing and in the afternoon often a bit shady with mature, old trees close around. The building's imposing height is nearby unmatched yet its decay is evident with old wooden windows securely barred from those who try pass which makes it seem the hospital of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Here I mostly study the Hospital's angularity, its historical and nearly comically sterile art deco with an occasional chimera for some Gothic fright thrown in. Much of the main hospital is of a light industrial nature now. Though I question if its back half wasn't once an ER ward with narrow openings to allow ambulances of an earlier era access.

Walls, walls, walls

In alignment with feeling like a building out of a dis-Utopian psychodrama we have lots of tall, repetitive walls. All unique in their wear as even concrete, clay and the maintenance of the US Army and a well funded University can't stop aging. Though I'm sure someone is researching aging around here somewhere.

Loading, loading, loading...

The classic loading docks found were all very nondescript as to why one would be used over another. None were particularly good sized suggesting large deliveries are merely a thing of this building's past.

Potpourri...

The miscellaneous...

Corner treatment two ways

As our tour approaches back around the Main Hospital to exit out by the Barbara Davis parking lot we can see an imposing sandstone corner overlooking a lit wall in two ways. One, the nefarious questions invited by efficient beaurocracy's mystery. Or two, the vague and vaporous answers given by big organizations aspiring to meet the needs of many with nary any customization for the few.