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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 :)

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