Designing for Place: Local and traditional inspiration for architectural detail.

• Author: Perry, Richard

Sealaska Heritage Institute's new Arts Campus in downtown Juneau resembles a giant Tlingit bentwood box. The main building for the Alaska Native Science and Engineering Program on the UAA campus is shaped like a canoe. The newly renovated office building at 601 West 5th Avenue in downtown Anchorage evokes the majesty of a calving glacier.

Local culture and geography have always helped architects and designers tie buildings into the community and landscape. The more specific the inspiration, the more unique the project, distinguishing it from any other place.

The location and tradition might be as tiny as a neighborhood school and its emblems.

"The color scheme for one of the schools we recently finished was the Eagle River Elementary project," says Jennifer Midthun, associate architect at BDS Architects. "We asked for the staff's input, which image speaks to them, and how they envision their school. In the end, and through several collaborations, we decided to go with [the] eagle in the birch tree theme."

Eagle River Elementary was rebuilt after extensive damage from the 2018 earthquake. Midthun explains that the school colors are blue and yellow, and using the image of eagles in birch trees and thinking about the various textures and colors was a starting point for the rest of the decisionmaking for the project.

"We use instruments of design and tactics to employ nature elements and the color scheme," Midthun says. "The materials and the textures we wanted to utilize were fantastic."

BDS Architects has provided architectural, design, project management, and planning expertise throughout Alaska for forty years. Midthun says the method is very much a collaborative process. For Eagle River Elementary, designers spoke to administrators, teachers, students, and support staff like janitors.

Those sources are all fair game for integrating a project with its surroundings. Architects draw inspiration from the area's natural beauty, tradition, and culture, and that vision can be seen in their final designs.

Listen Locally

When the Kenaitze Indian Tribe approached Stantec to help design the Kahtnuht'ana Duhdeldiht education campus in Kenai, the firm thought outside of the box. Instead, designers thought of a basket. The curved exterior of the building, which held a grand opening in September, is covered with rainscreen panels that give the fagade a woven appearance.

The tribe had seen success a decade earlier with its Dena'ina Wellness Center. That...