Glass will be abundant in Mt. Lebanon project

The use of glass throughout the renovated Mt. Lebanon High School will make the building more secure and welcoming, architects said Monday.

Before a meeting of the Mt. Lebanon School Board, architects updated school officials about the use of materials and a floor plan for the nearly $115 million project. In contrast to the current school, the design calls for using glass, including the school color of blue, to make the building more transparent.

"That's a security issue as well as a welcoming issue," said architect TomCelli of Celli-Flynn Brennan, Downtown, the lead local architects for the project, after the presentation. "It's a very transparent building at the ground level and all the entrance locations."

The building will use glass to reflect heat, reducing the need for air conditioning, and will also use aluminum from recyclable products. Those are important factors in the quest to get a silver LEED rating for environmental friendliness.

Celli hopes the building will inspire students.

"The main entrance will have grand stairs that lead up to the commons, and all around that entrance we'll have art and music," he said.

The walls will feature quotations from famous people such as Albert Einstein and Confucius, but students could also choose quotations from their own sources.

"Really, this building is about tradition, but it's also about new generations of minds inside," said architect Trung Le of OWP/P, the Chicago architectural firm that is designing the school.

In June, the school board approved a design that combines new construction with renovation of the original building, which dates to 1928. The building has not been renovated in more than 30 years.

The design reduces the 545,255-square-foot structure to 440,000 square feet.

At the request of residents, the board added a third gym and two lanes to the design of the swimming pool.

Construction will take place in three phases over 3 1/2 years.