Best Architectural Brainstorming Session

By day, Maria Cole heads up the expansion of the Denver Art Museum for Davis Partnership Architects. By night, she heads up Architectural Laboratory|Denver, a non-profit group that brings together architects and artists to discuss theories of design, free from the constructs and constraints of day-to-day reality. But Cole doesn't limit the discussion to stuffed-shirt academics or think-tank snobs; instead, Architectural Laboratory offers a public lecture series so the community can come together to riff on such topics as "The Code of a Great City" or "Decoding Diplomatic Architecture." (Can you tell the lab took a cue from the Da Vinci Code for this year's theme?) That's a progressive twist on the concept of community-building.