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Vail Mountain School Creates Luxury Lodge-like Campus

(colorado.construction.com, July 2006 issue)

By Diana Murphy

Nestled along a hillside, the Vail Mountain School's new $17.8 million campus reflects the traditional mountain vernacular of the Vail Valley, drawing on inspiration from the area's luxury lodges and an independent-minded client.

Photo courtesy of klipp/James H. Berchert Photography

When Brian Klipp and Greg Cromer began work on the master plan and design for Vail Mountain School's new campus, the Denver architects carefully considered the wishes of the school's board of trustees.

"A primary objective for them was to have a school that has more program space [than the existing facility], but keeps the quality of a large home," said Cromer, a principal at klipp. "We strived for a scale of architecture that brought about that type of feeling. Of course, it's kind of hard to design a 90,000-sq-ft building to feel like a home."

The challenge was met by embracing the architecture of the countless luxury homes and resorts that grace the area.

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"The Vail Valley has very strong ties to the mountain vernacular," Cromer said. "During one of the first design work sessions, they brought us this notion of lodges, and that drove us to looking at examples in Beaver Creek and Bachelor Gulch, like the Ritz Carlton."

The Vail Mountain School has batten-and-board siding and a base of local stone, which allowed the klipp team to create a design "that tends to pull references more on the residential side of the mountain vernacular rather than the commercial."

The result is a hillside campus that welcomes students, staff and visitors with a "home-away-from-home" atmosphere.

"It's not just a school - it's really a community home," said Clark Atkinson, vice president and division manager for Shaw Construction, the project's general contractor. "When you walk through the front doors and into the great room, you get a sense that this is a real community of learning."

Three Phases

Vail Mountain School is an independent K-12 campus founded in 1962. In 2000 the school's board of trustees hired klipp to master plan and redevelop its existing campus to better serve the Vail Valley community and position Vail Mountain School as one of the premier independent college preps in the country.

The master plan provides for a new 87,000-sq-ft building consistent with the school's educational philosophies while maintaining the current enrollment of 325 students. Notable elements were a new regulation soccer field with artificial turf, the relocation of a historic homestead cabin and construction of eight faculty housing units, as well as classrooms, a library expansion, a 250-seat dining hall, gymnasium, computer labs, an art gallery and three art studios.

The first phase of the school building was completed in summer 2004; the final phase was finished in November 2005.

The project involved "very complex timing and logistics," Atkinson said. "We couldn't miss a beat because of the academic year and the school breaks. We even had to coordinate work to accommodate academic testing."

Because the school remained operational throughout the project, the second phase of construction - building the school's main building - was broken into two halves.

"We had to sequence our work so we completed the first half during a period that fell between academic breaks," Atkinson said. "We finished that in June, let them move in and get ready for fall, and then during the summer we knocked down the existing old school and built the second half of the new school."

Mountainside Campus

Located on a confined site at the base of Vail Pass at an altitude of 8,300 ft, Vail Mountain School's new campus was designed to minimize the building mass against the hillside.

"It sits as a simple two-story building to the south and works its way into the hillside," Cromer said. "We tried to stack the building as much as we could and then orient the massing. The classroom clusters are perpendicular so that it looks like a collage of building blocks along the main corridor."

The school's location also proved tricky, thanks to its other main border - Interstate 70.

When Vail Mountain officials decided to upgrade the school, they were committed to staying in the town of Vail "and that left them with a small site next to the highway," Cromer said. "So another driving issue was how the school was going to sit next to I-70 and still be a functional school."

Noise was a concern in the existing school. Because it wasn't air conditioned, windows were often open to let in the mountain breeze, which brought traffic noise along with it.

To solve the problem, the school was designed so that the majority of classrooms are on the opposite side of the building from I-70, with the larger, more public spaces - the commons area, dining hall and auditorium - positioned closest to the traffic.

Inspirational Client

Cromer, who has worked on dozens of K-12 projects, said the success of Vail Mountain's design can be attributed in large part to the passion and commitment of the school community.

"I think the building is different in one way because the user is an independent school and this type of client is different than a public school client because they have such a strong vision or philosophical approach to their education," he said. "So what was really important was how we were going to capture that unique spirit in their building. The client really invited the design team into their 'home' to understand the cultural environment they needed to create for their school."

Cromer said he was also inspired by how committed school leaders were in raising money for the construction of the new school, undaunted by the cost or the challenges.

"I definitely tip my hat to the board of trustees and leaders of the school," he said. "On projects like this, people talk a lot about momentum. Often, though, you get a group that's really excited and then they start dealing with reality and everyone starts backing away from the table. The opposite took place at Vail Mountain School."

As a result, strong bonds were formed between the entire project team, Cromer said.

"I really felt there was a strong, intimate and creative relationship between myself, the contractor and the owners," he said. "We had our challenges, and we all stuck to it. We all knew this was [the school's] one shot, and we wanted to give them the best."