Anchorage Daily News

One of the best ways to build green? Go small.

That advice came to life Saturday at a workshop and tour on environmentally friendly architecture in Anchorage.

The tour's yellow school bus couldn't quite make it up the icy driveway at the final stop, way up in Stuckagain Heights, so it deposited dozens of architects, designers and other interested people on the road to check out a just-built contemporary house.

It has loads of cool features but a main living area of about 2,500 square feet, counting a loft, which is small for a high-end residence.

"It's a compact home," said the architect, Steve Bull, who used to live in Anchorage and now is Seattle-based.

Some highlights: Floors made of concrete but so polished they look fancy. Floors of scrap wood leftovers pieced together in a mosaic of warm wood grains. Bamboo plywood with raw edges exposed. Radiant in-floor heat. Solar panels and wind power.

Huge windows to take in the view to the north, including the Alaska Range, but south-facing skylights for winter light, too. The designers did a number of light studies to get the windows just right, Bull said.

"It's all about the finishes," said Julie Decker, a board member of the International Gallery of Contemporary Art and the Alaska Design Forum.

The organizations sponsored the "Shades of Green" workshop and tour and hope to put attention on things any of us -- from individual renters and homeowners to big-time developers -- can do.

"I think we're just starting to have this conversation here," Decker said.

Start small, workshop panel members said. Use energy efficient screw-in fluorescent bulbs instead of old-style incandescents. Drink from reusable Nalgene bottles instead of throwaways. Bring your own tote to the grocery store and pass on the plastic.

Peter Briggs, a landscape architect and moderator of the panel, is on an Anchorage committee working on a green building ordinance for the municipality. They call it the "Sustainable Building Initiative."

Briggs said the group is crafting a measure, which the Assembly would have to approve, that would require city-owned buildings to be built green and give incentives to private developers who do the same.

Some progressive work is happening in the Mat-Su. New schools are being built with an eye for energy efficiency, water savings, local products and less toxic carpets and paints to make the indoor air better for teachers and kids, said Jason Gamache, an intern architect with McCool Carlson Green.

The Mat-Su School District is participating in the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design rating system called LEED for Schools.

Designations of green goodness are beginning to get recognized in Anchorage, too.

Saturday's tour included the expansion of the Anchorage Museum of History and Art, which is being built green, Decker said.

It also included the National Park Service headquarters downtown, with its motion activated lights, low-water toilets, reflective ceiling tiles and recycled rubber flooring.

The JL Tower in Midtown, also on the tour, is being built green, too. The Alaska chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council says it will be the first LEED-certified building in Anchorage. Among its special features will be racks for 40 bikes, reduced water use through toilets that have two options for flushing, and high performance glass on the building's exterior to reduce solar heat gain.

The workshop began at the BP Energy Center, designed by architect Bruce Williams. He said it wasn't designed to strict green standards but was built to incorporate the birch forest site. He first thought he'd like the building, used for meetings, to be in the middle of the woods.

"But that would have resulted in the destruction of the forest," he said.

So the building is at the edge of the trees. People walk on a path through the woods to get there. In doing so, they experience "where we live," he said.

The second floor offers another treat. Small rectangular windows frame slices of the forest up close, bark and leaves and sometimes birds.

Find Lisa Demer online at adn.com/contact/ldemer or call 257-4390.

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