A Pueblo Away From Home
By K. Robert Wendel

A new home away from home is taking shape at the site of the Santa Fe Indian School, with architects and contractors creating a new campus to replace buildings that are more than a century old.

Established in the late 1800s, the Santa Fe Indian School was controlled for nearly 100 years by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. In 1976, a coalition of 19 pueblos took trusteeship of the 144-acre campus on Cerrillos Road in Santa Fe.

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The Albuquerque offices of Flintco Construction and ASCG Inc. teamed to construct the $40 million design-build project that finishes in stages. Work on new dormitories and classrooms finished in August, with a student life center expected to finish before February.

Preliminary plans call for the old buildings to be renovated and used by local community groups.

New construction on the campus entails building 82,000 sq. ft. of one-, two- and three-story dormitories; a 53,000-sq.-ft. fine arts and humanity classroom building; a 30,000-sq.-ft. practical arts building; and a 40,000-sq.-ft., two-story student life and media center. Two of the one-story dorms are reserved for honor students.

"This project is really setting the bar high for other Bureau of Indian Affairs schools," said Flintco project manager John Rotenberry. "This school is getting international attention."

The BIA is providing the funding for the project and continues to operate other schools in New Mexico and the West.

About 60 percent of the school's 700 high school students and 200 middle school students live on the campus during the school year.

Living spaces give the feeling of home, with fireplaces in the dorms as well as in some classrooms.

The project also includes a multipurpose sports field, baseball fields and softball fields and relies on a separate central plant with two chillers and two boilers. Miller Bonded Inc., Grant Mechanical and National Heating did the mechanical work. All are Albuqueruqe firms. Builder's Electric of Santa Fe was the electrical contractor.

The project is different from past BIA efforts, with the school's administration and students heavily involved in the design. It's also one of the largest projects in the BIA's building inventory.

Tribal authorities wanted to create a campus that represented their culture, which stretches back thousands of years in the Rio Grande River Valley.

"In the past, we sat on the sidelines and let other people tell us what we wanted and what they would build," said Santa Fe Indian School Director Joseph Abeyta. "This is our school. We wanted something that would reflect and sustain our culture."

Abeyta said it's the "intangibles" that create the spirit of the school, with students able to gaze at the stars from their beds and see the sacred mountains that ring Santa Fe.

Designers were tasked with creating a "home away from home" and nurturing those "intangibles" for the students. School officials hoped that by creating a familiar atmosphere, students would be less likely to be homesick and drop out.

"The problem the school has had in the past is that students are a long way from home, and frankly, the existing buildings didn't remind them of home," said Erick Stoehr, a senior architect with ASCG and architectural manager. "They wanted the design to provide the sights, sounds and smells of the communities where the students come from."

That wasn't easy, considering that the design-build project essentially had 19 different owners. Architects conducted extensive outreach efforts to coordinate and integrate as much of the communities' input as possible.

The result is a pueblo revival style that adheres to the traditional architecture of the local American Indian communities. Roof planes are broken up with multiple elevations, and vigas, latillas and stacked masonry accents provide a taste of pueblo architecture.

"A very strong part of our process is involving all the players and the stakeholders, including the community members, in the planning and design of any facility," said Bill Davis, ASCG vice president of building services.

The dormitories are broken up into boys and girls wings and include "heart rooms," round, enclosed rooms that evoke the spiritual spaces that are common to pueblos.

While the project evokes the ancient pueblos of the Rio Grande Valley, the buildings all employ modern steel framing and construction techniques. Besides being cost-prohibitive, adobe bricks are also structurally unsound for most buildings more than one-story high. The steel frame also eased the construction of the various roof planes and architectural features.

"When you are trying to recreate pueblo architecture, there are lots of ups and downs, stepping and different roof planes," Stoehr said. "It's easier to achieve with steel than other systems."

The steel frame sits on a slab-on-grade foundation that in turns sits on an overexcavated site featuring engineered fill. Albuquerque firms Chava Trucking and Seymar Construction, Padilla Construction were site excavators and utility installers, with Noel Concrete and T and S Concrete working on the foundations and slabs.

Hung from the steel frame, Oriented Strand Board was covered with mesh wire and then a coat of foam was sprayed on. The foam starts out at 2 in. thick at the top of the wall, gradually gaining thickness and measuring 4 in. at the bottom. The foam is then covered with a three-coat stucco system with intergrally colored stucco on the final coat. The treatment gives the effect of a smooth, battered and undulating adobe wall.

Albuquerque's Hughes and Associates erected the steel frame with TC & I acting as the foam applicator and PCI applying the stucco. Both are Santa Fe firms.

A crucial factor in the project's success was sighting the school buildings to replicate a pueblo village while preserving views with religious significance. Site corridors allow views of the Sangre de Cristo Mountain Range and the Jemez Mountain range. The buildings radiate out from a central plaza that is the focus of the site design.

"The project was centered around the idea of a first-time student coming to the campus and not feeling disconnected from his home or community," Davis said. "The pueblo architecture gives the students something to relate to, as it did in the old days when the pueblo community was secured in a safe environment inside a complex of buildings."

>A Pueblo Away From Home
>An Alternative Route
>A Landmark of Their Own