By Mike Rosso
It wasn’t quite a napkin, but a few quick strokes on the backside of an appointment card led to the design of one of the most recognizable airport terminals in the world.
Retired architect Jim Bradburn, who currently lives outside Westcliffe, Colorado, recounts how those scribbles were eventually transformed into the tent-like structure known to most Coloradans as the Jeppesen Terminal at Denver International Airport (DIA).
Bradburn, a graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, first came to Colorado in 1976 to oversee the construction of the Helen Bonfils Theater Complex for the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. At the time, he was working for the architectural firm of Roche Dinkeloo and Associates of Hamden, Connecticut.