The Building Owners and Managers Association International Archives - School Construction News

Sustainable School Celebrates Topping Out

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Construction crews recently topped out the new Martin Luther King Jr. School in Cambridge, Mass. The 169,000-square-foot school has been designed to target Net Zero energy consumption, and will serve an estimated 740 students.

The Boston office of international design firm Perkins Eastman served as the project architect. In a statement on the project, Perkins Eastman Principal and market leader of the firm’s primary and secondary education practice area Sean O’Donnell AIA, LEED AP said, "Perkins Eastman is excited to celebrate this major construction milestone for this innovative community school with the City of Cambridge. We look forward to seeing the schools and the community enjoying its sustainable, high-performance learning environments in the near future."

Aside from providing students with a top quality educational facility, the $95 million Martin Luther King Jr. School was also designed to be a center of its community. The state-of-the-art complex will include a 40-student preschool and engaging community school and afterschool programs for all students. The design includes both a Lower School and an Upper School, serving pre-kindergarten through fifth grade and the sixth through eighth grades respectively. These schools will operate as distinct "neighborhoods" connected by an internal thoroughfare that also offers access to the shared community spaces.

In an effort to extend learning into the surrounding environment, the school will include a City Sprouts garden, outdoor hard and softscape areas, a preschool playground, teacher’s patio and a courtyard garden featuring an indoor/outdoor performance space.

The firm also included a plethora of sustainable features, materials and systems that have put the school on target to achieve Net Zero energy. The building is projected to have an Energy Use Intensity 60 percent less than typical educational buildings in New England and will save energy through proper orientation, pervasive natural light in almost every space and high-performance roof and wall assemblies. The school will also offset energy demands through the use of photovoltaic panels mounted on the roof and south-facing facades, according to a statement by Perkins Eastman.

The Martin Luther King Jr. School was also designed to achieve LEED Platinum certification, and includes a series of 65 geothermal wells, an automatic lighting dimmer system and gray water storage.

Speaking with Cambridge Day in June 2013, Deputy City Manager Richard C. Rossi commented on how the school’s sustainability goals will also serve to educate students, teachers and the broader community.

“The whole school community – those who work in the building, as well as the students and the parents – will get a real education about what net zero really means and how we can affect these energy savings,” Rossi said. “This really bodes well for the future as we move along with rebuilding schools in the city. This will be more and more of an important part of that agenda, and good too for the young kids in the school. They’re going to really learn things because they’re going to be part of it. They’re going to see energy savings in how they conduct their daily lives.”

Preliminary work on the school, including a feasibility study, began in early 2012, followed by hazardous material abatement and demolition. The new facility is set to open in time for the 2015-2016 school year.

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A Platinum Harvest at UC Davis

DAVIS, CALIF. — UC Davis’ new winery, brewery and food-processing complex received LEED Platinum certification, establishing it as the first university facility of its kind to receive the award.

The grand opening of the new $20 million, 34,000-square-foot teaching-and-research complex located within the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science is scheduled for January 28.

A major component of green initiatives at the facility is the extensive use of rainwater and on-site energy generation. Rainwater is captured, stored and used for landscaping and toilets, and the building includes a system for capturing carbon dioxide from all wine fermentations.

UC Davis is raising funds to complete an auxiliary building to house equipment that will make it possible to capture, store, and recycle rainwater, which will be reused up to 10 times.

University officials say these systems are intended to eventually make the new facility self-sustaining in water and energy use. The new auxiliary building will also sequester all carbon dioxide captured from on-site fermentations.

Funded entirely by private donations, the new facility houses instruction and research facilities for the school’s Department of Food Science and Technology, and Department of Viticulture and Enology.

The new facility is the second UC Davis building to complete the LEED certification process, and the second on any of the UC system’s 10 campuses.

The team of architects, engineers and builders for the new UC Davis building included the following Northern California firms: BNB Norcal; Flad Architects; Frank M. Booth Inc.; Red Top Electric; KPW Structural Engineers; Creegan + D’Angelo Engineers; and The HLA Group, Landscape Architects & Planners Inc.

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OSU Energy Center Awarded LEED Platinum

Photo Credit: Oregon State University.

CORVALLIS, Ore. — Oregon State University’s Energy Center recently received LEED Platinum certification, making it the first Platinum-rated power facility in the nation, and the first Platinum LEED building on campus, according to planners.

The building, which opened in June 2010, includes a white reflective roof, water-efficient landscaping, and the use of recycled building materials. The majority of the project’s construction debris were also recycled, according Larrie Easterly, the university’s engineering manager.

The plant features a rainwater harvesting system to collect water used for boilers and hot water is generated by heat recovery from the steam system. Natural lighting and ventilation and radiant heating contribute to the building’s reduced energy use, which is 52 percent better than the Oregon building code, according to the university.

The energy center, which replaced a nearly 90-year-old heat plant with failing boilers and seismic issues, is a cogeneration facility that combines heating and electricity generation. The new plant, with a maximum generation capacity of 6.5 megawatts, allows OSU to generate about half of its electrical needs on site.

In addition to reducing its carbon footprint by 38 percent compared to the old facility, the new plant is expected to lower the university’s energy costs by $650,000 a year.

“I’ve worked on this project since day one, which is almost eight years ago,” Easterly said. “It’s really nice to see something that a lot of people have worked on finally being completed. It’s not often that facilities staff gets to work on a building made for themselves.”

Students will also be able to use the energy center to mine data and run simulations to learn how energy production works.

Funding for the project came from a combination of bonds, gifts, grants, energy tax credits and university funds. Some of the bond money will be repaid through energy savings, the statement said.

Oh Planning + Design and Jacobs Engineering, both of Portland, collaborated on the center. W&H Pacific worked on civil engineering and landscape architecture; PAE Consulting Engineers worked on mechanical, electrical and plumbing; Green Building Services was hired for LEED documentation and certification; Rider, Levett & Bucknall for cost estimating; and Andersen Construction was the construction manager/general contractor, according to the university.

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U.S. Schools Push for Platinum

School districts and architectural firms nationwide are pushing the envelope in green school design, seeking out new and efficient HVAC systems, lighting methods, water and irrigation tools, and other ways to make academic buildings lean and green.

Rachel Gutter, director of the Center for Green Schools at the U.S. Green Building Council, says that just building a green school is no longer enough, and that achieving LEED certification is increasingly becoming a hallmark of sustainable design to a building’s constituents, as well as to the greater community.

Under the LEED system, schools and academic buildings earn points for sustainable design for either new construction or renovations to existing buildings. Based on the points they receive, the schools receive either Silver, Gold, or Platinum ratings, with Platinum being the highest.

“LEED Platinum schools have a little more of that ‘eco-bling’,” says Gutter.

Citing a 2006 study by Davis Langdon construction consultants, Gutter says the average construction costs between non-certified buildings and LEED Silver or Gold was minimal at best, due largely to the cost of modern school materials and systems. Earning Platinum, however, is where extra costs start to occur. The premium usually correlated with the input of highly efficient HVAC and water systems, and the use of renewable energy sources like solar panels and wind turbines.

“Essentially, what the study did find is that there is a premium associated with pursuing a Platinum rating,” Gutter says. “It’s the integration of those types of systems that contribute to a slight increase in the bottom line. However, we at the USGBC are very confident that in many communities, a LEED Certified, LEED Gold, or LEED Silver can be built for little to no premium.”

Though the USGBC is seeing more and more LEED Platinum schools springing up nationwide, in the future, Gutter says the materials for Platinum-rated schools may eventually become just as affordable as those for the other certification levels, leading to an even greater number of platinum projects.

The following are examples of LEED Platinum school projects that caught our attention:

Windrush School Classroom Addition
Building Type: K-8 classroom and library building
Location: El Cerrito, Calif.
Architect: Ratcliff, of Emeryville, Calif.
Builder: West Coast Contractors, Inc., of Fairfield, Calif.
Size: 14,000 square feet
Completed: September 2008
Cost: $6.5 million
Select Awards: California Construction magazine’s 2009 Best Green Building of Northern California, AIA San Francisco chapter’s 2009 Merit Award for Energy + Sustainability

Taking advantage of the Windrush School’s bayside location, locally-based architectural firm Ratcliff incorporated naturally ventilated and cooled classrooms with radiant-heated floors into the school, which is made up of seven classrooms, a library and lobby. By eliminating the need for rooftop air handlers, Ratcliff was able to design in a green roof, operable skylights and photovoltaic panels.

The new wing’s walls, floors, and roof consist of insulating concrete forms. Comprised of 15 percent recycled content, the building includes concrete made of 50 percent recycled slag and fly ash. Forest Stewardship Council-certified wood was used for doors and casework. Situated on the location of a former school building, the project diverted 92 percent of all construction waste from landfills.

“With a year’s worth of energy and water data, we’ve seen how the substantial savings generated by this structure support the independent school’s bottom line,” says Brian Feagans, Ratcliff Project Architect for the Windrush project. “Plus, their students learn valuable skills about the efficient use of resources and adaptability to a changing ecosystem, all while studying in a healthy environment that provides abundant access to sunlight and fresh air.”

Evans-Harvard High Performance Music Classroom at da Vinci Arts Middle School
Building Type: Single-classroom building, houses music program
Location: Portland, Ore.
Architect: SRG Partnership Inc. of Portland, Ore.
Builder: Todd Hess Building Company of Portland, Ore.
Size: 1,500 square feet
Completed: September 2009
Cost: $653,000
Select Awards: Green Investment Fund from the City of Portland’s Bureau of Planning and Sustainability

The Evans-Harvard High Performance Music Classroom has been designed for net-zero energy consumption. Housing a main classroom and two practice rooms, the classroom prototype building features natural daylighting, much of it distributed through a large central skylight that manipulates sunrays using light-modulating louvers. Reflective sloped ceilings catch diffused light and shine it down toward the classroom, spreading light evenly to all corners of the room.

Architects at SRG Partnership designed in a passive cooling system that utilizes thermal mass for heat storage during the daytime. In warmer seasons, exterior doors covering air louvers are opened at night, allowing cool air to pass over the slab and wick away heat. Highly insulated walls reduce heat loss and heat gain, while integrated rooftop photovoltaic shingles provide most, if not all, of the building’s energy needs.

Kroon Hall at Yale University
Building Type: Academic building and home to the Yale School of Forestry
and Environmental Studies
Location: New Haven, Conn.
Architect: Centerbrook Architects and Planners of Centerbrook, Conn., and Hopkins Architects Partnership of London
Builder: Turner Construction Company
Size: 66,800 square feet
Completed: April 2009
Cost: $33.5 million
Select Awards: AIA Committee on the Environment’s 2010 Top Ten Green Projects award, Royal Institute of British Architects’ International Award

Designed to use 50 percent less energy than a comparably sized modern building, Kroon Hall embodies the ideals of its constituent, the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Architect of record Centerbrook Architects and Planners and Hopkins Architects Partnership built in a 100-kilowatt rooftop photovoltaic array, which provides about 25 percent of the building’s energy.

Four solar panels embedded in the building’s southern façade provide hot water, while a geothermal system of four 1,500-foot-deep wells uses underground water to heat and cool the building, replacing the need for conventional HVAC units. Kroon Hall’s air displacement/ventilation system moves warm and cool air through an air plenum and multiple diffusers in elevated floors. Rainwater harvesters channel water from the roof and grounds to a garden, where it is filtered through aquatic plants and stored underground. The stored grey water is then pumped back into the building for use in flushing toilets and irrigation.

“To earn a LEED Platinum rating, the building’s project elements perform many tasks at once,” says Mark Simon, a partner at Centerbrook Architects and Planners. “For instance, the building’s exposed concrete surfaces provide structure, finished ceilings, and thermal mass to store energy from day to night in the highly insulated building. Another example is the large gutters, which shade upper windows, collect storm water, protect from snow slides, and provide a walkway for photovoltaic maintenance.”

Crossroads College Preparatory School
Building Type: School renovation project and K-12 science classroom and library building addition
Location: St. Louis
Architect: TR,i Architects of St. Louis
Builder: G.T. Lawlor Construction
Size: 18,000-square-foot renovation project of main school and 9,000-square-foot addition
Completed: August 2009
Cost: $3.39 million
Select Awards: Finalist in the Sustainable Community category of the St. Louis 2009 Heroes of the Planet awards

Like many LEED school buildings, Crossroads College Preparatory School’s new addition is changing the way its students think.
“We realized this project is so much larger than a LEED Platinum school – it is truly changing behavior,” says Curtis Cassel, vice president of TR,i Architects. “After it opened, a senior student testified that she is not applying to any universities without LEED facilities.”

Sustainable elements of Crossroads’ new addition include 100 percent concrete paving to reduce heat island effect, a storm water plan that utilizes bio-swales and a rain garden, a solar hot-water setup, and an HVAC system that transfers exhaust heat to supply ventilation in the winter and cools warmer supply air in the summer.

Though it increased the school’s size by 21 percent, the Crossroads College addition has not elevated utility costs, even during record summer and winter seasons, Cassel says.

Many of the sustainable features reflect the design wishes of a collaborative partnership of students and faculty that worked with the architecture team.

“As a unique approach, Crossroads College Preparatory School assigned staff and students to work alongside us as members of the design team,” Cassel says. “Their feedback and participation was highly encouraged and their partnership enriched the entire process.”

Salmon Creek Falls Environmental Center
Building Type: K-8 school building and eco-resource center
Location: Occidental, Calif.
Architect: Persinger Architects and Associates of Sebastopol, Calif., and Symbios of Occidental, Calif.
Builder: A.E. Nelson Construction of Rohnert Park, Calif.
Size: 6,200 square feet
Completed: May 2009
Cost: $3.8 million
Select Awards: Coalition for Adequate School Housing/AIA California Council 2007 Leroy F. Greene Design and Planning Award

Part of the Harmony Union School District, the environmental center serves the school district, the ecological community, and local residents by supplying an enclosed cafeteria, meeting and gathering spaces, a library, and an auditorium. The building employs a passive solar design strategy aimed at reducing energy costs, allowing the school to exceed California energy standards by more than 50 percent.

The building’s crescent-shaped main cafeteria is southerly facing to make use of passive solar heating. Exposed concrete floors contain a high percentage of recycled fly ash and provide thermal mass, while floor-based radiant heating is divided into six zones within the school. Deep overhangs and a light shelf direct sunlight in or out of the building. A 30-kilowatt solar installation provides much of the building’s energy requirements and a vegetated roof, several bio-swales and onsite wetlands filter rain and storm water.

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NYC’s Cooper Union Awarded LEED Platinum

Photos by Mario Morgado; Courtesy of the Cooper Union.

One of the oldest higher academic institutions in the United States is now also the first to receive LEED Platinum certification in New York City.

The nine-story, 175,000-squar-foot building at Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art takes up a whole block and cost $150 million to develop. It features reconfigurable classrooms, laboratories, studios and public spaces. It replaces almost 40 percent of academic space and will house the engineering, humanities and social sciences departments, along with arts facilities.

Green features include an operable building skin made of perforated stainless steel panels that are offset from a glass and aluminum curtainwall to reduce the impact of radiant heat in the summer and provide insulation in the winter. A full-height atrium provides airflow and daylighting for building occupants, and a green roof provides additional insulation.

Radiant heating and cool ceiling panels were installed to improve energy efficiency and a cogeneration plant provides power to the building and recovers waste heat.

Thom Maye, design director of Morphosis, the firm also responsible for designing Emmerson College LA Center, University of Cincinnati Campus Recreation Center and San Francisco’s federal building, designed the building.

“When we planned Cooper Union’s new academic building at 41 Cooper Square, we challenged Pritzker Prize winning architect, Thom Mayne, to design an innovative structure that would inspire and contribute to the nurturing the exceptional, creative talent common among Cooper Union’s faculty and students,” says George Campbell Jr., president of Cooper Union.

The new facility will contribute to a 40 percent total reduction in carbon footprint at the campus, exceeding New York mayor Michael Bloomberg’s call for a 30 percent carbon footprint reduction by 2017, Campbell says.

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Arizona Rec Center Awarded LEED Platinum

TUCSON, Ariz. — A recently expanded recreation center at the University of Arizona was awarded LEED Platinum certification. Designed by architectural firm Sasaki in partnership with M3 Engineering out of Tucson — and originally targeting LEED Silver — the completed project integrates passive solar, programmed outdoor space, daylighting strategies and indoor environmental quality as fundamentals of the building, according to reports.

The Student Recreation Center Expansion involved building over a parking lot on the edge of the U of A campus fronting a busy four-lane vehicular edge to the north. Officials say that increasing the neighborhood density with the SCRE, the center stimulates existing alternative forms of transportation, such as public transit, bicycling or walking.

The expansion included the center’s primary Fitness Center, Outdoor Adventures, and a Multi-use Activity Court gymnasium. Two intersecting roof elements frame outdoor courtyards between the new and old structures, which house rock-climbing “boulders”, sand volleyball courts, and outdoor fitness areas.

The project was funded via student fees and was the first LEED certified building on the university’s campus.

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N.Y. College Targets Platinum

SYRACUSE, N.Y. — It should come as no surprise that the new Gateway Building, presently under construction at the State University of New York, has been designed to meet LEED Platinum certification and will showcase a sophisticated array of renewable energy technologies. After all, the $28.3 million building is part of the university’s College of Environmental Science and Forestry.

But, according to officials, the building, with 50,000 square feet of useable space, will be even more efficient than similar buildings of its type and size.

“The Gateway Building’s design and construction sets a new standard for LEED buildings, producing more renewable energy than it consumes,” says the environmental college’s president, Cornelius B. Murphy, Jr. “The building has a state-of-the-art bioclimatic shell while using solar, biodiesel and biomass resources to provide most of its energy requirements.”

Housing a conference center with seating for up to 500 people, as well as a new bookstore, cafeteria, and an exhibition gallery displaying the college’s Roosevelt Wild Life Station, the Gateway Building will contain facilities and programs never before offered on the College of ESF campus.

The Gateway Building will feature a unique design with a main entrance, a top floor, and a bottom floor. On the top floor will be a vegetative roof, featuring native plants and a walkout observation deck. Roof-mounted photovoltaics and solar thermal systems will provide both electricity and hot water.

The bottom floor will include a combined heat and power system designed to produce steam heat and electric power for the Gateway Building and four other academic structures, meeting up to 65 percent of the campus’ heating needs and 20 percent of its electrical load. The CHP system will use a wood pellet-fueled boiler connected to a steam turbine to product heat and electricity during the coldest months of the year.

A second CHP system, powered by three micro turbines fueled with natural gas and biodiesel, will produce additional heat and electricity year-round. As a result, the Gateway Building is projected to consume about 75 percent less than some of the campus’ older buildings.

Other green elements include natural ventilation, radiant heating in the floors, an environmental monitoring system, and rain gardens that facilitate storm water runoff.

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California District Plans Nine LEED Gold Projects

Montgomery Middle School

CHULA VISTA, Calif. — While construction has slowed for some districts, the Sweetwater Union High School district is working on nine projects designed to meet LEED Gold certification.

The projects were planned after Proposition O was passed in 2006 to provide $644 million in general obligation bonds for school construction and repair.

In addition to the nine schools planned for LEED Gold certification, designers recently completed plans for a LEED Platinum certified building to replace SUHSD’s Montgomery Middle School.

“Sweetwater Union is the only district west of Ohio that his nine LEED Gold construction projects and one LEED Platinum project in design,” says Jaime Ortiz, a program manager for Proposition O and for SGI Construction Management.

The $22 million project at Montgomery Middle School will involve demolishing existing buildings and constructing a two-story, 16-classroom structure with spaces for a library, counseling center, ASB, and cafeteria. The building will total 45,200 square feet in space.

Proposition O will cover $18 million of the project costs and the remaining funding will likely come from the State School Facility Program. Construction on the new building is scheduled to begin in 2011 and work on interim classrooms is currently under way, Ortiz says.

The new Montgomery Middle School will exceed state energy efficiency standards by almost 40 percent, providing ongoing district savings in the form of lower energy cost, according to reports. Key green features include a rooftop solar photovoltaic system designed to provide 80 percent of the electricity for the school campus.

“The most novel item that we’re including in the project is a thermal displacement ventilation system, which will allow conditioned air in through the floor rather than the ceiling,” Ortiz says.

The displacement system uses less energy because of its design, which allows air to be pushed along at a lower velocity.

Additionally, designers incorporated a number of environmentally friendly finish materials, carpeting with recycled content, linoleum flooring made of rapidly renewable resources, and low-emitting adhesives, paints, and finish coatings.

The campus will use low-flow restroom fixtures and landscaped bio-swales that will treat storm-water runoff before it is released off site. Landscaping will include drought-resistant native plants, allowing for more efficient irrigation systems. In addition, light-colored roofing and outdoor surfaces will reduce the heat-island effect by reflecting sunlight and heat.

Once complete, the school will have plenty of shaded outdoor spaces, allowing teachers to easily take their classes outside. In addition, indoor architectural spaces will allow for academic displays, allowing teachers and students to connect what they learn in the classroom to what they see in the hallways and corridors.

Each classroom will be equipped with a CO2 sensor, which will monitor the amount of oxygen in each room and adjust air circulation as needed. If teachers and students are not receiving the appropriate amount of oxygen, the sensors will automatically start HVAC systems to allow more fresh air into the room.

Classroom technology will include digital projectors and interactive whiteboards. Additionally, plans call for ceilings and walls designed of sound absorbent materials and HVAC systems built to minimize distracting noises and vibrations.

Gilbane, Inc. and SGI Construction Management are the project managers for the Montgomery Middle School replacement project. LPA Inc. of Irvine, Calif., is providing architectural and engineering services for the project.

Funds from Proposition O will go toward upgrading a total of 35 middle, high, and adult schools in the Sweetwater Union High School District, providing much-needed improvements to facilities used by 43,000 middle and high school students and 27,000 adult learners district wide.

Phase 1 of the improvements involved upgrading the district’s nine oldest schools. Schools currently under development include Chula Vista High School, Chula Vista Middle School, Hilltop High School, Mar Vista High School, Montgomery High School, National City Middle School, Southwest High School, Southwest Middle School and Sweetwater High School.

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ISU Expansion Awarded Platinum Certification

AMES, Iowa — The King Pavilion addition to the Iowa State University College of Design was awarded LEED Platinum certification, marking the first higher education facility in the state to reach the pinnacle of the LEED system.

The $6.6 million, 27,735-square-foot facility houses instructional studios used by freshman and sophomores enrolled in architecture, landscape architecture and interior design.

"In the King Pavilion, designers have brought together scientific knowledge and technical innovations to create an environment that inspires and supports our academic activities — a space both poetic and pragmatic," says Luis Rico-Gutierrez, dean of design. "That is the power of design, and a tangible example of what faculty, students and staff in the college of design stand for."

RDG Planning & Design of Des Moines designed the expansion. The project scored 53 points out of a possible 69 points on the LEED scale, including exemplary performance points for daylighting, water efficiency and recycled content.

The facility exceeds the LEED system’s 75 percent daylighting benchmark with clerestory windows on both levels and a light monitor that is designed to reduce the use of artificial light. Occupancy sensors also monitor interior spaces to adjust temperature and ventilation.

"According to our energy model, the King Pavilion will save a little more than $22,000 per year in energy — about $1 per square foot — over a code baseline," says Michael Andresen, RDG intern architect and the LEED Accredited Professional on the project. "If you imagine ISU’s millions of square footage and the potential of saving $1 per square foot, it begins to put into perspective the impact that sustainability can have on a larger scale."

The pavilion was awarded another exemplary performance point for achieving a 50 percent water-usage reduction compared to a traditionally built structure. Dual-flush toilets, automatic sink faucets and low-flow urinals, are a few of the conservation measures installed in the new facility.

The facility’s third exemplary point was awarded for the use of recycled materials for 32 percent of construction materials. Builders utilized 75 percent recycled steel, recycled blue jean insulation, recycled plastics and restroom countertops made of 100 percent post-consumer recycled paper.

The King Pavilion is one of only eight LEED Platinum buildings in higher education at public institutions in the United States, according to planners. It is the second LEED certified building on the ISU campus. The ACT Data Center in Iowa City is the only other Platinum-certified facility in the state.

"We used a number of new technologies on this building that haven’t been used on campus before, and it will help us demonstrate how sustainable design provides a great learning environment,” says Kerry Dixon-Fox, project manager and an architect with ISU facilities planning and management.

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New Sidwell Friends Middle School Certified LEED Platinum

Sustainable design concepts can take hold in a variety of different ways. Some school planners are forced to take a subtle approach, incorporating design techniques that offer the most cost-effective solutions for communities that are still not sold on the legitimacy of the green building. Other planners have the luxury of stretching their arms and grasping new ideas that push the boundaries of what can be done to produce high-performance, sustainable schools.

After initial reluctance, planners and officials involved with a project at Sidwell Friends School — a historic pre-kindergarten through 12th grade private school in Washington, D.C., with a list of high-profile alumni — were able to convince the school’s board of trustees and the community to take the latter route for a recent renovation and expansion.

The project at the Sidwell’s middle school building on the 15-acre campus included 70,000 square feet of renovated and new space with enough sustainable-design concepts to qualify it for LEED platinum certification — the highest level of certification from the U.S. Green Building Council.

The facility places an emphasis on water cycles along with connections to local geology and habitats.

Building With Principles

In 2000, Sidwell Friends School embarked on a master planning process that compared the campus with other urban schools, and Kieran Timberlake architectural firm created a needs assessment based on interviews with staff, faculty, students and the school’s board of trustees.

The completed assessment determined that the campus needed an expanded middle school and several other new facilities. The idea of sustainable design was introduced to the board of trustees early in the process.

“After a lot of deliberation among the board members, initially there were those who were very skeptical whether it was an appropriate use of resources by a nonprofit institution to look at the construction ideas we were considering,” says Bruce Stewart, head of school at Sidwell.

One of the main concerns was the pricing of sustainable building materials, which are often more expensive than conventional construction, although operational savings can make up for the cost over time.

For the Sidwell project, the tide began to shift after a trustee and other key members of the school’s community advocated that by implementing cutting-edge sustainable design, the school would follow the Quaker principles on which it was founded. Those principles included treating the earth with respect and leaving it as people found it, if not better.

“As a religion, they are about stewardship, and taking care of the world and everything in it — people and the place,” says Stephen Kieran, FAIA, partner at Kieran Timberlake, the project architect. “It wasn’t a far leap for them to move into a position of leadership in terms of sustainable design.”

To educate the board on sustainable-design concepts, a variety of experts were brought to meetings, alumni and other stakeholders who supported sustainable design pooled their resources, and interested parties took trips to other sustainable facilities.

“It took hold really swiftly as an ideal,” Kieran says. “The school made the decision very early in the process to create a LEED platinum school. Everybody jumped on board — it was pretty remarkable to watch — within a matter of months.”

However, there were challenges during the decision-making process. Following the Quaker philosophy, the board of trustees made decisions through consensus, rather than a majority vote.

“Convincing a Quaker group that works by consensus — everyone has to agree or nothing happens — was at times challenging,” Kieran says. “But in the end they really believed in doing the right thing.”

Doing ‘The Right Thing’

During the design process, the architect abandoned any preconceived notion of what the building should look like.

“We tried to derive holistically from a baseline and we didn’t assume what it would look like at the outset,” Kieran says. “We think a lot of sustainable design begins with an image of a known building type, with additional hardware. This project went back to a study of the problem and an effort to holistically solve the problem by integration rather than addition.”

That integration included incorporating ample amounts water. The middle school campus surrounds a manmade biological pond that, with the help of rainwater collected from rooftop gardens, acts as a wastewater treatment site. The closed-cycle system recycles water back to the building and lavatories.

“The space the whole middle school is formed around is a landscape that is about water,” Kieran says.

The building is also designed to be energy-efficient through building orientation, passive and mechanically assisted ventilation, solar chimneys, window placement, automated lighting controls and other features. By relying on daylighting and natural ventilation, planners hope the school will see a reduction in operational costs.

The amount of energy used for lighting in the building is expected to be 10 to 15 percent less than a conventional building of comparable size. Photovoltaic panels located on the roof generate about 5 percent of the building’s total electrical load.

The building is constructed with environmentally friendly materials that were harvested or manufactured to minimize their impact on the environment, including cork, gypsum, linoleum, bamboo and wheatboard substrate.

The school’s exterior is western red cedar that was obtained from 100-year-old wine casks, which allowed for design flexibility that could not be obtained with other materials, according to Kieran.

“It allowed us to manipulate the façade for solar shading and use the wood for shading in different ways on the eastern and western sides,” he says.

Other materials have low VOC emissions, which school officials hope will improve student health and reduce absences.

“We are going to watch in interest over the next couple of years to see if there is less absenteeism due to colds, and coughs and bronchitis,” Stewart says.

A Learning Tool

Now that the Sidwell middle school project is complete, it has proved to be a learning tool for everyone involved. For stakeholders involved with planning and design, the project introduced several new, unconventional ideas.

“Lots of elements of the building were foreign,” Kieran says. “When you set out with a leading-edge environmental agenda, there are lots of things that don’t look the same as a conventional building.”

Those same lessons are now passed on to interested people from around the world who have visited the facility for tours, according to Stewart, but the design also serves the important role of educating the students that walk its halls every day.

In addition to the environmental lessons that are incorporated in the building’s water systems, plans are in the works to create a system that will allow students to extract data on a variety of related topics, such as the amount of energy used at the building at a particular time, the cost of energy and other environmental factors.

“You can really integrate this stuff fully into a curriculum,” Stewart says.

Less tangible lessons are provided with exposed pipes and chimes in ventilation ducts, which promote awareness of the systems that are at use everyday, according to Stewart.

In the long-run, those involved with the project hope it will bring a lasting change that will have an impact far beyond the Sidwell campus.

“Will these kids be different because of their passage through that landscape on a daily basis? I think so,” Kieran says. “I think they are going to have a respect for water that maybe lots of children won’t have growing up.”

With a list of former students that includes the children of U.S. presidents, ambassadors and politicians, Stewart says the sustainable ideas introduced at Sidwell could go a long way.

“We feel that a lot of these young people are going to be in the position someday to have a major impact on public policy, corporate decisions, government decisions and scholarly research,” Stewart says. “It makes a difference by sensitizing these kids.”

Project Data

Architect: KieranTimberlake Associates LLP
Owner: Sidwell Friends School
Project Manager: JFW Project Management
General Contractor: Hitt Contracting, Inc.

PRODUCT DATA

Construction Materials
Brick/Masonry: Redland Brick, Dur – O – Wall reinforcing
Cabinets: Greenbrier
Acoustical Ceilings: USG
Door Hardware: Best, Von Duprin, LCN Closers
Wood Doors: Algoma
Metal Doors: C.H. Edwards
Elevators: Kone Inc.
Insulation: Certainteed
Roofing: Sarnafil
Skylights: Sunoptics
Glass/Glazing: Loewen Windows
Solar Chimney: Solar Innovations
Operable Partitions: Moderco

Furniture
Science Equipment: Collegedale

Carpet and Flooring
Carpet: Interface
Base: Roppe
Sheet: Forbo Linoleum

Lighting
Indoor Lighting: Finelight, Lutron Lighting Controls

Washroom Equipment/Supplies
Washroom Accessories: Bradley
Washroom/Shower Partitions: Comtec

Physical Education Equipment
Playground Equipment: Kompan
Lockers: Republic

HVAC/Controls
HVAC Units: Fulton Boilers, Trane Air Handlers
HVAC Control Devices: Johnson Controls Inc.

Miscellaneous
Draperies/Blinds: Mecho Shades
Photovoltaics: General Electric
Ceiling fans: Cirrus

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