Schools as Learning Tools - Article Rotation

Green components inside the Friends Community School include waterless urinals, energy-efficient residential air conditioning units, and an energy recovery unit. Photo by Alain Jaramillo.

Friends Community School

Friends Community School, Greenbelt, Md., chose HCM to design a school building that would help fulfill their mission to institute an environmentally based curriculum with a conscious goal of sustainability while maintaining a tight budget.

The most immediately noticed feature is the straw bale exterior walls. These non-load bearing walls covered with lime on the exterior and earthen plaster on the interior provide the facility with a high level of thermal and acoustical insulation that incorporates a natural and rapidly renewable material. The school is currently one of the East Coast’s largest straw bale structures. The bales for the school were procured locally and the dirt cleared for the building pad, coincidentally, was the perfect consistency of sand and clay to provide the base for the interior earthen plaster. When encased in plaster, straw bale walls are at least as resistant to wind, rain, pests and fire as other traditional building materials.

In addition to its use of straw bales, the school has other green features. For example, the roof decking is constructed with Tectum roof decking and approximately half of the roof is a “living” roof, meaning that it is covered with a growing medium and planted with several species of drought tolerant sedums. Additional green components include waterless urinals by Zurn and Kohler, energy-efficient residential air conditioning units made by York, as well as an energy recovery unit to temper fresh air with the embedded energy of the exhausted air. Due to budget constraints, the concrete slab with radiant floor heating was left exposed and covered with Eco Procote Acri-Soy Penetrating Clear Satin Sealer as a base sealer.

The site and exterior landscaping of the building also contribute to its overall sustainability. The school is adjacent to wetlands and surrounded by a national park. All classrooms in the building face south, allowing for optimal day lighting and 100 percent of storm water runoff is contained on-site due to bio-swells or landscaped areas that allow for infiltration. A rain garden has also been constructed to demonstrate ways of filtering pollutants from rainwater.

The 26,885-square-foot school was completed in September of 2007 and is designed to house pre-K through eighth grade students. The building is currently seeking silver LEED certification and in doing so, Friends Community School is working with HCM to create a self-guided tour highlighting the various sustainable aspects of the building. This furthers the school’s goal that the building be used to educate the students and greater public alike.

Dorchester Career and Technology Center

The Dorchester Career and Technology Center, Cambridge, Md., partnered with HCM to design and construct a new facility to help students gain a real-life understanding of how sustainable features can be implemented in a seemingly “conventional” building. The school offers courses in trades such as carpentry, electronics, HVAC service and repair, welding and masonry, and it was imperative that the school illustrate how sustainability can be achieved within the curriculum.

From the outside, the contemporary masonry, steel and glass structure does not readily show its green features — however, even the landscaping at Dorchester Career and Technology Center will be sustainable. The landscaping design utilizes species native to the area which require little irrigation and are used to growing in the area’s somewhat sandy soil. Another landscaping strategy incorporates small bio-swells that are less visually intrusive and easier to maintain, but that will help with drainage of rainwater on the school’s campus.

On the interior, the instructional spaces will be flooded with natural light, and in lab spaces, where natural lighting is not achievable or conducive, a high level of controllability utilizing compact-fluorescent light bulbs is provided. The majority of duct work, wiring and plumbing is exposed so that instructors can use the building as a teaching tool to show students concrete examples of how their skills can be incorporated into any building. Other sustainable features incorporated in the building interiors include the use of paints and carpeting that contain low volatile organic compounds (VOC’s), which can cause allergic reactions in some people. HCM looked at options for the roof and has designed the facility to include a highly reflective roof to deflect sunlight, and heat — from what is generally the largest source of heat-gain in a typical building.

One of the largest contributors to this school’s sustainable status is its geothermal heating and cooling system. This system uses geothermal heat pumps to heat and cool the entire building. Geothermal heat pumps use the natural storage capacity of the earth or ground water to provide a renewable energy source to heat or cool a space. In the case of the Dorchester Career and Technology Center, a vertical loop system is used. With a vertical loop system, in the summer, heat is pulled from the building and discharged to the ground and in the winter the heat pumps move heat from the earth into the building. The benefit of using this type of heating system is that it provides approximately 70 percent of heating/cooling energy from the ground and is very cost-effective.

The 97,000-square-foot Dorchester Career and Technology Center is currently designed, and is scheduled to break ground in early 2009.

As the topic of sustainability gains more importance and popularity, people are looking for green features within their everyday environments. Incorporating green features in school buildings is an ideal strategy due to he numerous benefits of sustainable construction. Architecture and design firms need to work with schools to create and design facilities that accomplish the specific goals of each facility. With this approach, educational facilities will be able to create spaces that are not only beneficial to the environment, but that can also be used to teach younger generations about sustainability, its benefits and how it can be incorporated into everyday life.