Creating Community Identity
Alaska US Post Offices
This program arose as the result of an unsolicited proposal to the United States Postal Service to aggregate the design and construction of new Post Office buildings for five remote Alaskan communities under a single contract in response to a change in policy favoring owning rather than leasing facilities.
Constraints to conventional building included a short summer construction season, permanently frozen sites, limited skilled labor and high costs of local labor and materials.
The designs were predicated upon an accelerated schedule of prefabrication in the Lower 48 states that enabled the design and fabrication of prototypical self-cooling steel piles for use on unstable permafrost, erector-set steel structures, completed modular buildings, transportation by land, sea and air, and installation and project occupancy within 12 months of the architect's appointment.. (In collaboration with Building Systems Development Inc.)
