Delivering Sustainable Schools 'What does it take to design a step change in the sustainable performance of a school?'
By Jerome Partington
Jerome Partington, Sustainability Manager at Jasmax Architects and an accredited advisor for TNS NZ has been working in parallel with Project Architect Justin Evatt on Avondale College, West Auckland. This is a significant rebuilding programme as part of a Masterplan Vision developed for the school. The project represents replacement and refurbishment of the equivalent of 88 of the college’s existing classrooms.
The question for Jasmax was to see how we could move on from small incremental efficiencies in building designs by delivering a step change in the wider sustainable performance of the school. Avondale College has an enviable and longstanding track record for student academic achievement and our aim was to match this in the sustainability arena.
Jasmax is known for designing schools that meet the needs of each school community in terms of their unique visions and aspirations; and which provide progressive, effective learning environments. And sustainability is increasingly becoming an important foundation element of the design process.
At Avondale we have been trialing the Integrated Sustainable Design (ISD) approach. Jerome ran a series of workshops to raise awareness of sustainability for the school leaders and design team, so they could understand it as a systems problem and then take a strategic approach to solving it in an education context. The workshops developed a project vision, identified key strategic commitments and a number of performance targets.
The school is aiming to use 35% less energy than currently with similar targets for waste, water and a significant increase in the biodiversity of the campus. The strategic workshop process opened up the problem to gain buy-in and ideas from all the team members and from them a number of innovations were identified which include:
- The design team working (more) collaboratively rather than in our familiar safe silo roles.
- Using Thermomass walls which have excellent thermal properties, minimal waste and are very durable.
- Identifying the EnviroChallenege program for the College which engages the students in sustainable behaviour change
- Energy audits on existing retained buildings to reduce peak demand and design out unnecessary infrastructure.
The first stage of the project is out for tender and construction is due to commence in July with continued design work currently progressing for the next stages of the over all masterplan.
For further details about this project, or about the use of Natural Step approaches in the construction industry, contact Jerome Partington - Sustainability Manager - Jasmax Auckland jnp@jasmax.co.nz.
