Skip to main content

An Update on The Willow School Project

Good Morning all, and TGIF!

It has been a little while since I discussed my current work, there's so many other things going on around the world I found valuable to share!

But since the initial intent of this blog was to speak through some of the points of the predesign, design and so on for the Willow School- let's catch everyone up!

The Health Wellness, and Nutrition Center will still be within the 20,000 square foot range. The owner is requiring daylight autonomy during school hours- this means that the building needs to be designed to use no artificial light during the average school day.

In order to decrease the size of our heating and air conditioning systems- the team and owners agreed to allow a larger range of thermal comfort. Basically, the air won't come on to make the building stay at 72 degrees, it will wait until it's almost 80. Before that, occupants will be encouraged to open the windows. On the other side of the spectrum, the building will be so air tight and well insulated, just the body heat from those inside it will help heat the space.

We are hard at work with our architects and kitchen designer to create a net zero commercial kitchen. Every inch of the new kitchen space is being carefully developed to utilize the space efficiently. The school must create a chart of intended hours of use to help the energy modelers hone in on exact energy demands- since the entire annual electricity use needs to be produced on site.

As for materials selection, I am working with the architects to find materials that meet the delicate balance of 'green' certification, recycled content, safe/ non-toxic ingredients, efficiency, and local manufacture. In some cases, we have found it is better to get a material from further away because over the course of it's life, it is the best option. That is, an item made in the US as opposed to Japan may have been locally manufactured, but if it requires more maintenance and has a shorter operational life expectancy- the added carbon footprint is easily equalled and surpassed when it comes time to call out repairmen and order replacement parts, etc.

Unfortunately, funding for the project is not quite where it needs to be to move forward with the groundbreaking this month as hoped. This also means the workload for me is much less. We hope to break ground in or around March of 2012 now- and hopefully I'll be back on the scene with lots of updates and pictures for the progress!

As for me in the meantime, I'll continue to update on local and global topics as I come across something I just can't stop thinking about! Keep checking in and thanks for all your support :)

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Eating Garbage

Garbage is Beautiful. And let me tell you why. In 2010, the EPA estimated the US produced over 240 million tons of municipal solid waste. That is over four pounds of garbage, per person, per day. We travel through our day throwing things ‘away’. But where do they go? Does your trash go to a landfill, incinerator, or Waste to Energy Plant? Currently in NJ, thirteen counties have solid waste landfills and five counties have resource recovery facilities (incinerators). Of the five counties with resource recovery facilities, three also have landfills to receive waste that cannot be burnt. Eight counties have awarded waste disposal contracts and require that all waste be sent to one facility for disposal. The remaining thirteen counties have a free market system and transporters may send waste out of the county or state. The majority of us don’t know information like this, and don’t care as long as we don’t have to look at it. But if we were forced to look at the garb...

Covid, baby

Working in the sustainability field has been turned on its head during the Coronavirus pandemic. I went on a short hiatus to become a Mom (Elliott was born in March of 2020 only a few days before lockdown in NJ), and when I resurfaced, our approach needed to be different, here are some examples: Typically, the balance between ample fresh air within a building and energy use would result in driving the building toward lower energy use. Now, the ability to increase the outdoor air is desirable and is carrying more importance as a design consideration. We almost always pursued green cleaning operations and maintenance plans with our projects, however the Green Seal certified (or other healthy for people) cleaning products do not disinfect to the level desired for Covid- forcing teams to decide between abandoning their healthy cleaning policies and safety. Everything is packaged and sealed, and wrapped again. Cafes stopped allowing refillable coffee cups, towns that had plastic ba...

Breaking News- Renewable Energy can STILL power our planet!

Yesterday, The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released an exciting report about the potential of Renewables and the world energy market. Over 120 world experts produced a scientific document over 1,000 pages long that provides a solution to 'business as usual' carbon emissions. They believe that we could meet the globe's energy needs with 80% renewable energies by mid-century . This would be a socially, politically, and physically strenuous task. If we eliminate all the complications and shift our paradigm, we still have issues like that which Ramon Pichs, Co-Chair of the Working Group III, added: “The report shows that it is not the availability of the resource, but the public policies that will either expand or constrain renewable energy development over the coming decades. Developing countries have an important stake in this future—this is where most of the 1.4 billion people without access to electricity live yet also where some of the best conditi...