Considering the millions of words devoted to how we should tailor our lives to be nicer to our planet, it's apparently easy to be green.

But not when it comes to constructing a major building that is a showpiece for environmental smarts.

The new EPA Region 8 headquarters building, designed by Portland, Ore.-based Zimmer Gunsul Frasca, is the product of lengthy discussions in terms of the client and the Lower Downtown neighborhood, as much as the client and the architect.

The way in which the building addresses the corner of Wynkoop and 16th streets, its setback (in terms of fitting into the district but also accommodating security needs), its materials and its massing were subject to review. It's safe to say the result here is better than what was first presented as a design for a major addition to the LoDo landscape.

About 750 employees work in this building, which fronts on Wynkoop Street but which has a strong facade on 16th Street and a presence on Little Raven Street.

The mix of brick segments and glass walls, with windows set off by finlike elements, continues around the building - except for the face it turns toward 15th Street, which will be obscured to some extent by another new building on the corner of 15th and Wynkoop streets.

The 15th Street facade is glass and a rougher material, concrete, but has not been unattended in terms of detail. And adding to the attempt to enliven the entire composition is a wedgelike shape that shoots off the facade on Wynkoop in the direction of Union Station.

Taken together, the two new structures replace the stocky blond brick Denver Postal Annex, which since the 1950s has anchored that block and whose slow demolition at times was difficult to watch.

The architects at Zimmer Gunsul Frasca say they wanted to create a building with a civic presence, and it's clear they have. The building, which is organized in the form of two "L's," brings class but subtlety to an area that is a sort of transitional piece between the predominantly historic Lower Downtown and the booming, contemporary Central Platte Valley.

But the EPA regional headquarters also serves as a sort of a show home for green. The architects call it a didactic building, one designed to teach by example.

And that makes sense: environment . . . protection . . . green. They should work together, right? And here, call it somewhat of a mixed bag, and point the finger at money.

On a building tour with employees from Denver's Division of Environmental Quality (who really do know green) it was clear that green comes in many shades. In this case, it is gold, as in the LEED ranking the building recently earned - but with a few questions attached. (LEED is the acronym for the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program.)

Organic materials are used in basic applications, including rice hulls in the doors' cores, for instance, and wheat board doors on cabinets. Exposed concrete is used effectively throughout the building, and helps in temperature moderation.

Restroom countertops are made of Ice Stone, an attractive alternative to stone or plastic, made of recycled concrete and glass; the urinals are waterless (we looked), and the heating/cooling system is designed with the flexibility to deal with those two "Ls" in different ways because they face different climatic challenges. (The architects describe the building as a square doughnut, because of the inner area, the atrium, where the legs come together.)

Two features are standouts:

• Green roofs planted with sedum, part of a pilot program to gauge its effectiveness in slowing and cleaning stormwater runoff;

• A series of sails that top the atrium, swaths of canvas that direct natural light to the nine floors below, or shade the area below, depending on time of day.

But the major materials - those that make the lobby area so welcoming (it includes a two-story-tall set of bleachers so staff can assemble right there) - are not really green in the technical sense of the word.

That's because the idea of purchasing locally or regionally (within a 500-mile radius) got lost in the number crunching in highly visible areas. The atrium granite is from India, polished in China; the wood is bamboo, a favored material because it is quickly renewable but it hails from China; the textured stone plank walls are quartzite from China. Colorado sandstone lost out to cost.

It's a beautiful space, for sure, in a building certainly worthy of its prominent space in an area that many believe will boom even more when Union Station becomes a regional transportation hub.

The EPA regional headquarters building proves that discussion and attention to detail can result in a contemporary building that works quite nicely in an old neighborhood. But it also demonstrates that in some cases it takes more green to be green than some budgets will allow, even in a project that should be green through and through.

EPA Region 8 headquarters

• Where: 1595 Wynkoop St.

• Serves: six states and 27 tribal nations

• Size: Nine stories, 305,000 square feet

• Builder: U.S. Government Services Administration

• Developer: Opus Northwest

• Design architect: Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Architects

• Architect of record: Opus Architects & Engineers Inc.

• Construction cost: $45 million, plus tenant finish

• Green features include: Green roofs, a nine-story atrium that directs natural light throughout the building, and a heating/cooling system designed to adjust to two different building zones.

Chandlerm@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2677

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