All Copy Products Celebrates Grand Opening of New Headquarters

The opening of the new All Copy Products Headquarters marks a continuation of the big and bold thinking that has been the trademark of this office solutions provider for the past two decades. Since 1999, when the company was purchased by current CEO and President Brad Knepper, the company has grown from a single office with seven employees to nine regional offices and over 350 employees. Given its rapid growth and expansion into new service areas, All Copy Products wanted to bring its Denver workforce together into a headquarters that would support its collaborative culture and allow for future growth. Working closely with Bryan Construction, MOA ARCHITECTURE looked to All Copy Products’ explosive growth and forward-thinking attitude as an influence on the design of the new headquarters.

The area’s unique character proved to be a major influence in the design of the building’s exterior. Located in the industrial, underdeveloped northwest corner of Denver’s Lincoln Park neighborhood, the site is a mere stone’s throw (or scooter’s ride) from Downtown Denver. With an industrial and manufacturing presence that goes back over a century, the area presents a gritty and unpolished side of Denver ripe for growth and development. Honoring the industrial heritage of the area while also looking to the future, the progressive style of the new headquarters plays with concrete forms, elegant metal paneling, and electrochromic glass.

“Given the building’s visibility along Colfax Avenue, we knew it was important to give it a real presence,” says Eric Vogel, Director of Design at MOA. “The projecting glass volumes, in combination with the vertical and horizontal metal panels, give the façade a real sense of drama and movement.”

Despite its promising location close to downtown, the site was not without its challenges. One issue that emerged early in design was the environmental covenants protecting the site, which restrict the excavation and disturbance of contaminated soils. Because the environmental covenants made below-grade parking unfeasible, MOA developed a scheme incorporating an above-ground, structured parking podium for 220 vehicles directly into the building massing, which still allows for convenient connections to the lobby, offices, and warehouses.

“We are really proud of how we worked with the environmental covenants,” says Bret Kudlicki, architect at MOA, who managed the project. “It’s so important to find ways to creatively design and build on these brownfield sites that are close to the downtown core.”

The interior program of the building was crafted to serve All Copy Products’ unique corporate structure and business needs. A key design driver was the need for a compelling “tour route,” providing prospective clients with a strong introduction to All Copy Products and its featured products and services.

“We understood how crucial client tours were to All Copy’s business model,” says Vogel, “so we worked closely with their leadership to understand the structure of these tours and generate an intuitive narrative through the design of these spaces.”

The two-story lobby with its grand staircase serves as a dramatic start to the tour route, which leads clients through three separate showrooms, with the final room on the second floor offering a view into the building’s massive warehouse space, emphasizing the breadth of the company’s operations. The final stop of the tour is a window looking into the company’s dispatch center for their external IT services division.

Understanding employees’ preferred working styles and the company culture, the design team sought to provide the building with a wide variety of working and collaboration spaces along with a rich selection of amenities. The office floors include working environments that range from larger meeting spaces to huddle rooms to more private work settings away from workstations. Building amenities include a fitness area and an employee lounge on the fifth floor, which opens out onto a balcony with stunning views of the Front Range and Downtown Denver. The building also emphasizes the importance of daylighting to user comfort, with one of the Denver metro area’s largest installations of electrochromic glass, which regulates the amount of sunlight let into the building and eliminates the need for manual blinds. With the surrounding area in the midst of a historic transformation, the new All Copy Products Headquarters is emblematic of Lincoln Park’s larger ambitions, a striking example of what’s in store for the neighborhood.