Image courtesy of Pickard Chilton

An industry organization that promotes the use of mass timber building materials recognized New Haven-based architect Pickard Chilton’s design of a new office building that’s preleased to a major utility company.

The 6-story T3 RiNo project was developed at 3500 Blake St. in Denver’s River North neighborhood by Hines, McCaffery and Ivanhoé Cambridge.

Nonprofit WoodWorks presented a 2025 Wood in Architecture to Pickard Chilton at a reception during the 2025 AIA Conference on Architecture & Design in Boston on June 5. 

The building was designed with a post-and-beam frame, supporting concrete-topped cross laminated timber panels that were manufactured by Chantiers Chibougamau in Québec, Canada.

Xcel Energy Colorado preleased over 220,000 square feet of office space in the building in 2023, which includes floor-to-ceiling windows, 12-foot ceilings and outdoor terraces.

The building also includes 19,000 square feet of retail space.

“An overarching team goal was to maximize and express the exposed wood. As such, the building’s high-performance, transparent façade was designed to maximize exposure of the full timber structure from both the interior and exterior,” Pickard Chilton Principal Michael Hensley said in a statement. 

The use of mass timber rather than traditional building materials such as steel and concrete reduced embodied carbon by 38 percent, Pickard Chilton said in an announcement.