He became a senior instructor at the University of Colorado Denver in the fall of 1990, teaching advanced-level architectural design studios and lecture courses.

[2] Beginning soon after the completion of his graduate studies at Harvard, Darden began writing and designing, publishing essays on architectural theory, as well as publishing theoretical architectural designs (which were later printed in Condemned Building), lecturing at various universities and conferences, and exhibiting various works in galleries and group shows (one notable exhibition was of his Museum of Impostors in the gallery Artists Space in the group show From Here to Eternity[3]).

Some of the most distinguished are the Entering Professional Designer Project Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1984 for his work Museum of Impostors;[4] The Young Architects Forum winner (now Architectural League of New York) in 1985, also for Museum of Impostors;[5] recipient of a traveling grant from the Graham Foundation in 1988 for Hostel;[6] and a Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome in 1989,[7] during which he developed Hostel, Temple Forgetful, and Confessional[8] (see also List of Fellows of the American Academy in Rome).

Darden was also listed as one of the leading fifty contemporary architects by Yoichi Iijima in 1993, along with Peter Eisenman, Frank Gehry, Lebbeus Woods, and Eric Owen Moss.

The last year he attended the GSD Darden took a studio with Stanley Tigerman, in whose class he designed the project Saloon for Jesse James.

This study depicts four leaning books: Marcel Duchamp's La Boite Vert, Jean-Jacques Lequeu's Architecture Civile, Étienne-Louis Boullée's Treatise, and Giovanni Battista Piranesi's Le Carcieri.

[17] One notable work of visionary architecture that strongly influenced Darden was Giuseppe Terragni's Danteum, an unbuilt monument commissioned by Benito Mussolini for the Esposizione universale (1942).

He would use the term pre-texts to describe passages that "in-form" the initial portion of the design process, but simultaneously cloak and conceal the real intention.

"[21] After Darden's death a note of his was found in the project file box for Oxygen House that read: "Literature continues to create an agenda for representation which I deem to be pertinently as large as life.

[25] Darden also references another passage from Moby-Dick in the title image of Condemned Building: "How many, think ye, have likewise fallen into Plato's honey head and sweetly perished there?

Other literary works that influenced Darden's projects were William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, the first chapter of which Darden quotes extensively in the letter from Burnden Abraham;[26] Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, which is referenced in the project Temple Forgetful and quoted (Book V, Chapter II, "This Will Kill That") at the end of Condemned Building;[27] the myth of Romulus and Remus, which influenced Temple Forgetful; Arthur Rimbaud's poem Le Bateau ivre, which is quoted extensively in the doctor-patient interview in Condemned Building,[28] where it is noted that Darden and Rimbaud had the same birthday;[29] the Marquis de Sade's Juliette and Justine, which were among the sources of inspiration for Sex Shop, along with the Biblical story of Adam and Eve;[30] and William Shakespeare's Hamlet, passages from which can be found throughout Condemned Building.

[35] He writes a short piece of prose—entitled Dweller by the Dark Stream—on the "Contents" page of Condemned Building: "I am inclined while watching the turtle to turn it over and study its underbelly.

In 1993 Darden published his only book, entitled Condemned Building: An Architect's Pre-Text, which exhibits ten of his visionary architectural designs he had completed in prior years.

[38] Cass and Polly are most likely feminized renderings of the celestial twins of Greek mythology, Castor and Pollux (better known as Gemini), and their sister, Helen of Troy.

[40] The remainder of his drawings are held at the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library at Columbia University,[41] New York, New York, with the exception of a select few others, which remain in private collections, such as a couple of the final drawings for Temple Forgetful, which are held and displayed in the office of David Tryba Architects in Denver, Colorado.