Fitness gurus agree that for a healthy body, you should make a commitment, track your progress and don’t forget to stretch. Turns out these guidelines work for structures, too. More than two years of planning, evaluation and a lot of flex are shaping the $79.1-million Health and Learning Center at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. The 270,000-sq-ft renovation and expansion project, which is targeting LEED gold, consolidates four programs housed in five buildings scattered across campus. Ranging one to four stories, it includes a 57,000-sq-ft clinic, 69,400 sq ft of classrooms and a 110,000-sq-ft student recreation center. An athletics component

While the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has buoyed high-profile sectors such as transportation and energy, in Indian Country—the sovereign lands of 562 American Indian tribes across the United States—$3 billion in stimulus funding quietly has moved into development backlogged road improvements, hospitals, correctional facilities and schools. Many of the projects were planned but remained unfunded for years, in some cases for more than a decade. Photo: Kumin Associates/Mahlum Architects A $91-million stimulus-funded tribal hospital project on the Seward Peninsula in Nome, Alaska, is raised 4-ft above grade to avoid permafrost. The ARRA windfall gave cash-strapped tribes more capital than

One cool dawn about 20 years ago, architect Douglas Stroh sat horseback at the top of an 8-mi trail descending into the western Grand Canyon. He’d left home in Prescott, Ariz., hours before, driving in darkness north to the trailhead near tiny Peach Springs. Though he hadn’t been on a horse since age 12, he mounted up and joined colleagues for the three-hour descent to Supai village, located 2,000 ft below the rim and home to about 500 Havasupai Indians. Stroh wasn’t sightseeing. He was on the job, headed to a Havasupai Tribal Council meeting to discuss design of a