Client + Project Spotlights

Sometimes homeowners find that they need just a little extra space – a musician’s practice area, an alternative medicine studio, a woodshop, a greenhouse, a guest house, or a rental unit. Caddis has worked with a number of clients to design their dream spaces. Caddis also handles the often-complicated zoning and permitting processes in a variety of jurisdictions.

Caddis Collaborative is based in Boulder, Colorado, a city known for its connection to a variety of contemplative practices. Quite a few Caddis team members are drawn to these meditative traditions, and the firm has developed a specialty in designing spaces for such practices. We are glad to be able to “walk our talk” (or perhaps “walk our silence!”) as we use our architects’ thinking caps to create spaces we personally practice in and cherish. Learn about the contemplative places we have designed.

Caddis Collaborative is known for designing contemplative spaces. One such project is the Dharma Ocean Foundation facility in Boulder, which includes meditation spaces, administrative spaces, and a recording studio.

Caddis Collaborative staff have been designing contemplative spaces for a long time! Bryan Bowen, principal architect, and Kelly Siu, senior architect, have designed several of the buildings at Drala Mountain Center (formerly Shambhala Mountain Center) in Red Feather Lakes, Colorado. Using feng shui principles and landscape-appropriate architecture, Bryan and Kelly designed a set of buildings that fit into an Asian-inspired natural landscape – in Colorado.

Caddis Collaborative continues its work for contemplative centers with its design of a multipurpose building for Dhamma Sela, near Elbert, Colorado. Also known as the Rocky Mountain Vipassana Center, this facility offers “insight meditation” training. The design goals? A building that reflects Dhamma Sela’s teachings and that is flexible and adaptable as the facility grows and changes in the years ahead.

A 30-minute drive into the Foothills from Boulder, Colorado, Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center is a rustic Buddhist retreat center that brings Buddhism and Dharma back into the natural world where they originated. Caddis Collaborative helped preserve and codify the historic use of this land as an educational retreat center through Boulder County entitlement processes and provided design services for bringing the facilities into year-round use, adding renewables, and ensuring historic preservation.

Located in a century-old miner’s cabin in downtown Boulder, River and Woods restaurant specializes in what it calls “Colorado comfort cuisine.” Caddis was pivotal in the reoccupation of this historic building as a restaurant.

Located in Boulder County, Hillside School educates students with dyslexia and other learning differences through a half-day personalized learning environment. Caddis Collaborative is helping this wonderful community resource as it evolves, conducting Boulder County Special Use Review and Entitlement processes for a wonderful new facility that will architecturally match Hillside’s innovative teaching approach in a setting that provides quiet outdoor space and nature play opportunities for the students.