Excerpt: Nueva School Science and Environmental Center by Leddy Maytum Stacy Architects carefully weaves multiple sustainable strategies together, creating education spaces that teach environmental stewardship. The project aimed to preserve and improve the campus’ open space, benefiting the community by preserving native flora and fauna. The design promotes a healthy learning community, focusing on user comfort, social engagement, and nature connections, while reducing initial costs and long-term maintenance.
Project Description
[Text as submitted by architect] The Science and Environmental Center embodies the Nueva School’s mission is to inspire passion for lifelong learning, foster social acuity and environmental citizenship, and develop the child’s imaginative mind, enabling students to learn how to make choices that will benefit the world. Founded in 1967, the Nueva School is an independent school, with the Hillsborough campus serving over 500 students from pre-kindergarten to eighth grade. The 33-acre campus, located in the semi-rural coastal hills of the San Francisco Peninsula, features a thriving coastal live oak woodland ecosystem, a variety of dispersed structures and dramatic views of San Francisco Bay. The Science and Environmental Center is the final phase of the earlier Nueva Hillside Learning Complex originally completed in 2008.
Buildings that Teach: The Science and Environmental Center project teaches environmental stewardship, demonstrating how human interventions can be sensitive to the local environment and support regional ecologies. The project carefully weaves multiple sustainable strategies together, connecting school culture to place, creating education spaces that inspire lifelong learners while showing reverence for the natural world. The building is 100% electric and designed to be net zero operational energy/carbon, producing on-site all the energy it consumes annually. Its narrow floor plate allows for ample daylighting, views and natural ventilation, demonstrating how passive natural systems can reduce our need for energy.
In an era of more frequent and severe droughts, the building promotes advanced water conservation by harvesting rainwater in a 10,000-gallon storage tank for reuse in the building’s toilets, reducing potable water use by 89% compared to the baseline.
The Science and Environmental Center is a threshold building, visually and physically connecting the built campus with the forested regional open space beyond. A “Canopy Walk” links the existing Student Center at the heart of the campus to the new Environmental Center with a universally accessible educational path across the steep site. By using the Canopy Walk, all students—regardless of physical ability—may experience and explore the seasonal rhythms of the restored oak woodland ecology.
Weaving Together: The design integrates straightforward, appropriate, and cost-effective sustainable design solutions that provide practical and poetic connections between people and the natural world. The building shape echoes the landform, following the topography of the hillside to minimize excavation and maximize outdoor education space that extends to ground floor classrooms. The narrow floor plate minimizes impacts to the existing natural features of the site, while maximizing daylighting and natural ventilation within the classrooms—two passive strategies that connect students to the seasonal rhythms of the site while reducing energy loads in the building.
The Canopy Walk provides a universally accessible journey through the forest that connects the new Environmental Center with the existing Hillside Learning Complex. The previously disturbed landscape in this area was restored to an oak woodland habitat with native and adapted planting to promote biodiversity. This heightened beauty and presence of the native ecology further grounds us to place, reminding students and visitors of the active role we must take in conservation and stewardship. The project includes eight classrooms and support spaces that provide a variety of innovative educational environments that connect students and faculty to the world around them, promoting environmental stewardship and lifelong learning daily.
Design Intent: A central goal of the project was to preserve and enhance access to open space on the campus. The benefits of preservation extend beyond the project site to the greater community which benefits from the preservation of native flora and fauna that support migratory birds and other wildlife. Enhanced universal access to the open space allows for all community members regardless of their ability to experience the seasonal rhythms of the native ecology.
The project team preserved open space by reducing the building footprint, conforming to existing topography, and selecting a previously disturbed site. Exterior circulation along the building is cantilevered from the structure, minimizing the foundation work and disturbance to existing open space. Similarly, the Canopy Walk is supported by single columns that allow the native planting and site drainage to continue beneath the elevated path. The existing open space adjacent to the building was regenerated with the planting of new oak trees and other native understory plants that support local bio-diversity.
The Canopy Walk has developed into the main circulation path to access the Environmental Center. It is a celebratory walk through the restored forest canopy that is experienced by all students as part of their daily movement across the campus. The Canopy Walk also supports universal access to the greater community who participate in conferences, summer camps, and other community events hosted by the school.
Embracing the idea of universal access early in the design process, the designers explored options for providing a direct, accessible path from the existing campus development to the new building. Due to the significant vertical grade change between the new and existing buildings, they developed the Canopy Walk that extends from the Student Center ground floor to the second floor of the Environmental Center. An elevator accessed from the exterior of the building provides vertical connection down to the first floor and basement, which provides access to the adjacent forest and open space preserve.
Design for Ecosystems: The project is located on the San Francisco Peninsula, an area defined by a Mediterranean climate with vegetation zones that include Chaparral, Coastal Scrub, Coastal Oak Forest and Grassland. The project touches the land lightly and pursues a landscaping strategy that promotes biodiversity, incorporates carbon sequestration, and reinforces an immersive, visceral experience of the rhythms of the natural world.
Water: Located in a semi-arid climate that experiences increasingly frequent and severe droughts, the project mitigates the impacts of stormwater drainage and reduces potable water use in the building by over 89%. Water-saving fixtures along with a stormwater reuse system was designed to reduce potable water consumption by 70% from baseline. Irrigation water use was optimized in the design by accommodating hydro zones and climate exposure. By locating the new building around a natural ridge, the project minimizes disturbance of natural drainage patterns. A Storm Water Management Plan reduces site drainage to a practical minimum given the high clay content of native soils and steep slopes.
Building Efficiency: The building was designed as a simple structure to minimize conditioned area, maximize plan, structure and skin efficiencies, and reduce material use. The exterior stairs and corridors reduce wall area and conditioned space. The net to gross floor area ratio is 95%, extremely efficient for a school building. The building mass is minimally articulated, resulting in simple, highly efficient structural systems and reduced surface area. Wherever possible, structural systems are left exposed as finish material.
More with Less: The exterior circulation allows the classrooms to have windows at each side of the room, maximizing daylighting and natural ventilation -two passive systems that reduce energy loads and operation costs in the building. Ceiling fans are provided to further promote air circulation and increase occupant thermal comfort. This strategy allowed for mechanical cooling and associated costs to be eliminated from the project. The exterior circulation at the second floor also acts as a sunshade blocking daylight from entering the classrooms in warmer late spring and summer afternoons.
Design for Energy: To reduce both dependence on fossil fuels and carbon dioxide emissions, the Science and Environmental Center incorporates all electric building systems and is designed to be zero net energy/zero net carbon. Design strategies include:
1- Passive Systems: The linear form of the building allows for classrooms to have ample access to daylight and natural ventilation, reducing the energy loads associated with lighting and mechanical cooling.
2- Active Systems: An all-electric heat pump system provides in-floor radiant hydronic heating to all spaces. With the addition of ceiling fans to promote air circulation and natural ventilation, mechanical cooling was eliminated from the project. Energy recovery ventilators provide 100% outside air when the classrooms are occupied. System controls are straightforward, appropriate to the simple conditioning strategies employed. LED lighting reduces overall lighting power density by 49%.
3- Energy Conservation: A high-performance exterior building envelope reduces thermal bridging and provides significant R values at the roof and walls to conserve interior thermal comfort. Energy efficient building systems combined with a high-performance building envelope reduce building EUI to 23, a 71% reduction from baseline.
4- On-site Renewable Energy: A 70 KW photovoltaic array is located on the roof of the building to offset the building’s energy use over the course of the year. The design focused on maximizing the onsite renewable energy potential of the photovoltaic array. This included extensive studies on ways to minimize impacts of shadowing from adjacent mature trees. A highly efficient panel along with optimizers was incorporated into the final design with an anticipated annual energy production of 80,200 kWh.
Design for Well-Being: The design promotes a healthy learning community and individual well-being, emphasizing simple solutions that maximize user comfort, social engagement, and connections to nature, while reducing first cost and long-term maintenance. 100% of the regularly occupied spaces have access to operable windows, natural daylighting, and views out to nature. Material selection, including no-VOC paints and adhesives, formaldehyde free materials, and linoleum flooring, combined with 100% fresh air mechanical ventilation ensures healthy indoor air quality.
Building Resources: Building materials were selected for economy, durability, and resource efficiency. The overall shape of the building models resource efficiency through simple building forms that rely on an efficient structural steel system to provide long term durability. Acknowledging that ecological conservation and social responsibility extend beyond the project site, 100% of the interior and exterior wood is FSC certified from responsibly managed forests on the west coast. 15% of building materials are made from recycled materials, including steel, concrete, cotton insulation, and aluminum. During construction, 89% of site and construction debris was recycled and diverted from landfills.
Design for Change: The building was designed to provide flexibility and adaptability in both short and long terms. In the short term, teaching spaces are easily adaptable to evolving curricula and technologies. Overhead electrical cord reels in each classroom accommodate a variety of desk configurations. The simple building plan was generalized to the greatest extent possible, allowing for future adaptation to alternative uses in the long term, including housing if needed.
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