Yesterday, First Lady Laura Bush, architect Robert A. M. Stern, and landscape architect Matthew Urbanski unveiled the design of the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas, Texas. Located on the east side of SMU's campus, the design will complement the consistent Georgian architecture of the rest of the university. And when complete, the $250 million building will be LEED Platinum certified.
The portable classroom is just about as ubiquitous as the mobile home, so our ears perked when Toby Long, principal of Clever Homes and Toby Long Design, mentioned these first-generation, prefab, green portable classrooms. Working with the Chartwell School in Seaside, California -- itself the first LEED Platinum campus in the country -- Toby Long Design designed, fabricated, and installed two relocatable classroom structures on the Chartwell campus. Almost incredibly, the on-site work only took about four weeks.
The new science and library building at Crossroads College Preparatory School, located in the city of St. Louis, is seeking LEED Platinum certification. If obtained, it will be the first K-12 school in St. Louis to earn certification. Head of School Billy Handmaker* was committed to achieving the highest level of certification possible, while still spending within the budget and ending up with a good looking building. He said, "from the beginning, we said 'we want Platinum, but won't compromise."
We've mentioned Arizona State University's green School of Sustainability, and we've also mentioned greenscreen modular trellis panels, but we're going to bring it all full circle here in one article. ASU used greenscreen green walls in the renovation of this 1960s building to add a little something extra -- to cool the interior, clean the air, and bolster the design. A wall was removed to add this distinctive element, and the strategy seems to be working.
The Open Architecture Challenge is an international design competition that's hosted every two years. This year, Architecture for Humanity and Orient Global hosted the competition to bring the architecture, design, and engineering community together with students and teachers to envision the classroom of the future. After receiving over a thousand designs, each submission was rated on feasibility, sustainability, innovation in design, and overall design quality. Now, after four rounds, there are eight finalists and one of these will win in September. Check these designs out and tell us which is your favorite:
Last November, Project FROG demonstrated their FROG Zero classroom at Greenbuild 2008, and it was quite impressive. Now, the company has a couple projects in the works, and they just broke ground on a new Center for Science and Global Citizenship at the Watkinson School in Hartford, Connecticut. The 4,000 square-foot science center will generate more energy within its footprint than is required to operate the systems. To do so, it will rely on some of the following active and passive strategies:
Some of the students of tomorrow will have the opportunity to learn in incredible, well-designed buildings. Take for instance this $28 million building designed by Ross Barney Architects with the assistance of The Sheward Partnership. Commodore John Barry Elementary School was designed to LEED Silver certification but ended up obtaining LEED Gold (at no extra cost to the School District of Philadelphia). The District has obtained certification for two other schools and committed to build all future schools to LEED Silver certification. Four such schools are on the boards right now.
Check out this bright, contemporary renovation of an old, 1960s nursing building. The renovation was led by the design team of Lord, Aeck & Sargent and Gould Evans Associates; they’re anticipating LEED Silver certification and did it all with a $6 M budget. Now complete, it will be used for Arizona State University's Global Institute of Sustainability and a newly formed School of Sustainability. In terms of performance, the Institute is anticipated to save 18.7% on energy and 50.3% on water use compared with its baseline usage -- plus, it's been outfitted with six, hard-to-miss, state-of-the-art AeroVironment parapet turbines.
The classroom of the future was on display throughout Greenbuild 2008 and it's safe to say that attendees were impressed. Project FROG built the classroom using their FROG Zero system of modular construction -- a zero-energy building system. What's interesting, though, is that the contractor, Fisher Development, assembled and finished it in six days. And it's beautiful inside and out. The company has received venture funding and can sell their classrooms for 25% cheaper than the competition. Soon enough, we'll all be able to watch the proliferation of healthy, architecturally-designed learning environments.
Update: 11/22/08 - Photo Tour: FROG Zero Inspires Greenbuild 2008
We're going to be on the scene at Greenbuild this year, are you? If you are, get ready for Project FROG's "FROG Zero" classroom, which will be on display as part of the "School of the Future, Today" demonstration. The 1,282 sf structure is the company's new, zero-energy building that's intended to raise the bar for green classrooms. Project FROG, an acronym for Flexible Response to Ongoing Growth, manufactures high performance, modular, green building systems that are rapid to deploy, affordable, and sustainable. Units can be purchased as individual classrooms or in combination to create campuses. The one on display at Greenbuild will include some of the following eco-friendly features:
home about us contact us good links green books green jobs
rss feed
daily emails
twitter
facebook
technorati
delicious
