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In Alaska, a dazzling elementary school blends into the landscape, inviting students to enjoy the view while they soak up knowledge.

By Lee Sherman
Photos by Chris Arend

EAGLE RIVER, Alaska—What you notice about Alpenglow Elementary School when you drive up is the way the long, low building follows the lay of the land. Perched on a plateau in the sheltering embrace of the Chugach mountains, this award-winning school stretches out along the Eagle River Valley a few miles outside Anchorage. The school's footprint follows the river's tumbling course, and its profile matches the wooded foothills, whose birch, aspen, and spruce give way to barren, rocky peaks above. When autumn tinges the trees in glowing red, the school's brick-colored masonry recedes into the landscape, chameleonlike.

While the exterior design is all about melting into the surroundings, a closer look reveals a slew of contrasting notions that the Anchorage-based architectural firm ECI/Hyer has managed to braid together: Functionality with whimsy. Practicality with playfulness. Durability with artistry. The result is a school that provides food not only for the brain, but also for the spirit.

Designed to capture and hold the scant winter light and to frame the surrounding peaks in the bountiful windows, Alpenglow is the antithesis of the dim, boxy fortress where most kids spend their school days. Bringing daylight into interior spaces — schools, particularly — is a "very strong belief" of the firm, says Terry Hyer who, as principal architect on the $9 million Alpenglow project, worked with project design architect Greg Frosberg and project manager Jonathan Steele.

"Up here, we have short daylight hours in the wintertime," Hyer notes. "A good deal of the time when school is in session, we are faced with gray skies and darkness. So to capture that daylight when we have it is very important."

Natural light comes in everywhere — through skylights and through small hallway windows positioned low to the ground where kids can look out as they walk by without standing on tiptoes. It filters through a 21-foot-high green and blue glass mural that gives the school's vaulted common area a sense of cathedral-like serenity. Light, which buoys the heart and so perfectly symbolizes learning, also has a very practical aspect, Hyer stresses. It has the important purpose, he says, of "way-finding," or "trafficking" within the building. You don't usually think of "dangerous intersections" inside schools, but where one hallway turns a corner or meets another hallway, kids can collide or make a wrong turn. At these places, the architects have binged on daylight, inviting it in abundantly through doors and windows.

Curving out above the valley is the school library, offering expansive views of river and mountains. With the primary and intermediate classroom wings and common area converging there, the library is, by design, the school's heart and focal point. A cozy alcove tucked into one corner invites children to come closer, to climb the steps and investigate the small, square windows, each inlaid with a colorful illustration from Aesop's Fables. The whimsical windows, as well as the glass mural in the common area, were created by artists chosen in a juried competition under the state's "1 percent for the arts" requirement for all public buildings. Kids and visitors encounter another touch of whimsy when they walk up to the front entrance, where they discover a Disney-esque clock, cockeyed in a cute, cartoonish sort of way and painted in blazing yellow and passionate purple. Its lighted dial offers a cheery welcome even on the most dreary days.

"The clock has become a local landmark," says Principal Larry Huff, who happens to be wearing an Alpenglow School sweatshirt imprinted with the very same clock.

Traveling from the library down the wide hallways, a visitor is struck by the peaked, bright-white ceilings in both halls and classrooms, lending a further sense of light and space. Teachers have several levels of lighting to choose from in classrooms, depending on the activity. They can, for instance, direct more intense light onto the board to draw students' attention there. Or they can dim the room for a quiet, read-aloud story. Kids' artwork hangs on the hallway walls ("to the fire marshal's chagrin," Hyer says). The classroom pods, zoned for primary and intermediate, give a "neighborhood" feel to the place.

Hidden behind the inviting aesthetics of this 6-year-old school in an upper-middle-class neighborhood of the Anchorage School District are the creative ways the architects have accommodated safety, flexibility, and practicality in the design. For example:

• A dual entry, with parents driving up to the main doorway on the west end of the building and buses swinging around back to the east end, to avoid the before — and after-school traffic tangle and the safety hazard of kids running between cars.
  
• A stage that straddles the multipurpose room and gymnasium, with movable walls on both sides for "vast flexibility" in use.
  
• An exterior and grounds design that incorporates native landscaping with play areas; indigenous plants such as blueberries and cranberries are integrated with a sledding hill and an ice rink where kids skate and play hockey.
  
• A covered, lighted stairway connects school grounds to the high-end subdivision where many of the students live.
  
• A vaulted "galleria" or main intersection that takes advantage of the efficiencies created by "adjacencies" — the grouping of spaces — of the office, gym, computer lab, multipurpose room, and library.

With this kind of creative, outside-the-box thinking, the architects were able to get maximum mileage from the square-footage limit mandated by the state and contain costs at the same time. Surprisingly, great school design doesn't need to cost more than bad or even mediocre design. For example, the rich exterior colors of brick-red, buff, and black were achieved with relatively inexpensive concrete masonry blocks and cast stone. The bands of color, which the architects "played with" on a computer model of the building, mirror the tones in the volcanic rock and reddish bark of naked birch trees in winter. Another example of durable, inexpensive materials that look terrific is the hallway flooring. The granite tile is tough enough to hold up against hundreds of little feet. Yet the pattern achieved with black, white, and gray squares is attractive, even elegant.

"The district is always after materials with high durability and minimum upkeep," says Hyer. "Our goal is to bring variety into the space with color, material, and volume. We aim for designs that are timeless — that hold up, both in the aesthetic expression as well as materials. We try to stay away from fads."

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