Rubik’s Cube on a Ridge

by Jonathan McGaha | August 3, 2014 12:00 am

Eureka Springs High School[1], Eureka Springs, Ark., was built on a ridge that drops down approximately 100 feet across more than 1,000 feet. Laura Morrison, principal, architect of record, Morrison Architecture P.C.[2], Holiday Island, Ark., says the unlevel site presented multiple design challenges. “When you’re dealing with that kind of slope, you’re not only stepping from north to south, you’re also stepping from east to west,” Morrison says. “So we weren’t just going down the hill, we were also going to the side. When you do that, you end up with a building that could be kind of convoluted.”

Metal panels made it possible to divide the building into sections as it went down the ridge. “We broke the building in steps down the site,” Morrison says.

 

Hometown Design

The high school’s design was inspired by Eureka Springs’ layout, Morrison says. Eureka Springs is a mountain town with about 2,500 residents, and more than a million people visit annually, she says. “So you have this windy, main street, and then you have these storefronts or these buildings that are attached to it,” Morrison says. “It’s a similar concept that we used for the city’s high school.”

Morrison completed the project with her husband, Charles Morrison, project manager at Morrison Architecture. Both referred to the high school as a Rubik’s Cube building. Charles Morrison says they had to figure out how to get all the different pieces onto the difficult site, and every time they moved one piece with a particular function, they needed to move others to be adjacent to it. “You had to kind of go switch your cube back and forth,” he says. “We were pulling things from level to level and north to south, trying to get it all to work out until it finally clicked into what it needed to be.”

Another reason metal was selected for the project was because it provided a human scale to the structure. “It helped us break down each of these appendages into a scale that was more relatable,” Morrison says. Main Stret

The high school’s central corridor with the main north and south entrances, dubbed Main Street, is clad with 13,361 square feet of Allentown, Pa.- based ATAS International Inc.’s 24-gauge, 36-inchwide by 1 1/2-inch-high Belvedere Short Rib wall panels
(BWK360) with exposed fasteners in Brite Red Kynar, installed by New Braunfels, Texas-based A-Lert Roof Systems, a division of Centurion Industries Inc.

Main Street connects five wings: academic, media/library, core classroom, gymnasium and cafeteria. “We used a vertical ribbed panel because it helped to emulate the spine of the school,” Morrison says. Metal panels were then installed horizontally on each wing to give a continuous flow back to the spine, she says. The use of metal and colors provides wayfinding for anyone approaching the school.

Color Connects Classrooms

Metal also provides continuity of color and texture to the high school. A ribbon of patina green aligned with the windows wraps around the building to provide continuity around all the buildings at different levels. For this section, A-Lert installed 6,744 square feet of ATAS’ 24-gauge, 8-inch-wide by 1 1/4-inch-high Multi-Purpose Wall panel (MPN080) with concealed fasteners in an Antique Patina Kynar.

Metal panels in Rocky Grey clad the top third of the building: the roof, gutters and downspouts. The Rocky Grey panels have 3-inch ribs and exposed fasteners, while the panels below in greens and grays have concealed fasteners and more of a plank look, Morrison says.

A-Lert installed 68,605 square feet of its 24-gauge, 16-inch-wide Standing Seam roof panels with 2-inch-high ribs
(KR24-S) with concealed fasteners in Galvalume and its 22-gauge and 24-gauge soffit panels (AL-12) in Rocky Grey and Dove Gray Kynar. Additionally, A-Lert installed 13,484 square feet of ATAS’ 24-gauge, 16-inch-wide by 7/8-inchhigh Rigid Wall panel (MFR160) with concealed fasteners in Rocky Grey Kynar, and 7,963 square feet of 24-gauge, 12-inch-wide by 1 1/4-inch-high Multi-Purpose Wall panel (MPN120) with concealed fasteners in Slate Grey Kynar.

The colors communicate the high school’s interior functions to the outside. Morrison says people that haven’t gone into the building, but have gone around it, understand how it functions. “Just by looking at it from the outside, they can tell from the use of colors,” Morrison says.

 

Open for Education

Garage doors were utilized in two areas of the building. Royal Overhead Door, Mabelvale, Ark., installed two Dixon, Ill.-based Raynor Garage Door Co.’s Raynor Series AlumaView Optima garage doors in anodized aluminum at the cafeteria and exterior, and four AlumaView Optima garage doors in red between the gymnasium and food court and concession areas.

“The garage doors on the south side where the cafeteria was kind of a retail concept where we’ve got outdoor seating there,” Charles Morrison says. “So on a nice day they can open up those two big garage doors and, all of a sudden, this big cafeteria becomes an indoor/outdoor space.”

Charles Morrison says if there’s function in the auditorium where a sound barrier is needed, the doors that go from the gymnasium onto Main Street and the food court can be closed. “But when you open those garage doors up, it really opens up that whole Main Street area into the gymnasium itself; it all becomes one big space at that point.”

 

Eureka Springs High School, Eureka Springs, Ark.

Completed: December 2012
Total square feet: 83,400 square feet
Building owner: Eureka Springs School District No. 21
Architect: Morrison Architecture P.C., Holiday Island, Ark.
General contractor/metal decking installer: Kinco Constructors LLC, Little Rock, Ark.
Garage door installer: Royal Overhead Door, Mabelvale, Ark.
Metal panel installer: A-Lert Roof Systems, a division of Centurion Industries Inc., New Braunfels, Texas
Garage doors: Raynor Garage Door Co., Dixon, Ill., www.raynor.com[3]
Metal roof panels/soffit panels/gutters/downspouts: A-Lert Roof Systems, www.alertroofsystems.com[4]
Metal decking: Vulcraft, a division of Nucor Corp., Charlotte, N.C., www.vulcraft.com[5]
Metal wall panels: ATAS International Inc., Allentown, Pa., www.atas.com[6]
Snow guards: S-5!, Colorado Springs, Colo., www.s-5.com[7]

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Source URL: https://www.metalarchitecture.com/articles/rubiks-cube-on-a-ridge/

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