Denver Affordable Housing Challenge competition 3rd prize winners - Radix Design

We’d like to take the opportunity to introduce you to the 3rd prize winners of our Denver Affordable Housing Challenge competition – Ozi Friedrich, Alexander Phillip St Angelo and Archer Lee Squire from United States!

Ozi Friedrich, Alexander Phillip St Angelo and Archer Lee Squire

Please tell us about your company (when it was founded, where it is based, how many employees, etc) Alternatively, if you do not have a company, please give us some insights on your own professional/academia background.

Radix Design was founded in 2016 as a small architecture firm dedicated to work characterized by social benefit, sustainability, and connection to place.  Rather than focusing on a single project type, Radix Design seeks out projects that strengthen communities and reinforce the unique character of Denver’s neighborhoods. Radix Design is based in a historic structure in the Baker neighborhood, right next door to the La Alma neighborhood where our proposal is based.  All three members of Radix Design worked intensively on the competition entry: Archer Squire, Alex St. Angelo, and Ozi Friedrich. The word ‘radix’ is Latin for a root vegetable - for instance, a carrot or a radish. For us, Radix stands for practicing architecture that is rooted in place, at home in the dirt; simple, elegant, and green.

Brief information about the projects that you/your company have been involved with. For instance, what scale have you focused on/preferred, any significant projects where the company/ individuals have been Involved?

Radix Design loves working on affordable housing, neighborhood preservation, and accessory dwelling units (ADUs).  Our design for the Denver Affordable Housing Challenge represents a synthesis of these three interests into a new concept for affordable housing development. Our most notable current project is the Chrysalis Apartments, with 70 highly affordable supportive housing units based on the principles of Trauma-Informed Design.  With a complex package of City and State funding, Chrysalis is currently entering into construction in the Uptown neighborhood of Denver. In addition to our large-scale work, ADUs are a central focus of our practice.  This includes highly customized designs tailored to individual clients’ visions, adaptive reuse of historic secondary structures, contextual designs for Landmarked neighborhoods, and supporting an affordable permit-ready ADU program.

What does architecture mean to you and what is the role of an architect in your society?

Radix Design aspires to create: Architecture of quality, beauty, and warmth. Architecture which is healthy and beneficial for its inhabitants. Architecture that benefits the place around it - street, neighborhood, city, land, and people.

Why do you participate in architecture competitions?

This is Radix Design’s first architectural competition.  As a small firm, we don’t typically have enough surplus time or budget to support what it takes to produce a quality entry.  However, this competition was so close to home, and so immediately related to the things we are passionate about in our everyday work, that we felt it was worthwhile to commit ourselves to a deeply challenging month of developing the competition entry while still keeping the business going.  

What advice would you give to individuals who struggle to decide whether it would be beneficial for them to participate in architecture competitions?

If you are a small firm like us who would like to seriously participate in a competition, the first thing you need is patient and understanding clients! The majority of our work is in ‘highly constrained’ situations (complex zoning, historic contexts, etc.). The open-ended brief of this competition was dramatically different from our everyday work.  It allowed us to explore thinking on many levels at once: urban structure, financial reality, livability, and pure design. Above all, we are excited for the opportunity to present our ideas to the jury and the wider public.