John Loomis | IDEAS

At first, we thought Patti Purcell thought quite differently than most elementary school principals. My SWA colleagues, John Loomis and Yoonju Kametani, and I were meeting with Patti to get her thoughts about a new outdoor classroom that we were designing for Bel Air School in Tiburon, California. “When students move on to 6th grade and up, all they really want to do is to hang with their friends, so why don’t we make this space for them to learn how to hang? Even a 5th grader needs to know how to hang properly.”

The vision from the school side was to look at the space as an outdoor student lounge where kids can hang out during the recess. But instead of beginning our designs based on our first instinct, we asked “What do the students want?” We asked Patti to have the students draw up their visions of this outdoor space and we would be back in a week to look at their plans. With that exercise in mind, we went back office and sketched our own version of the outdoor lounge space.

A week later, Patti brought the students’ sketches and gathered the teachers that would be involved in this project to look at the designs. The discussion was fruitful, as we walked the school staff through our design thinking, they ideas for a “conflict resolution mosaic path”, a place to display art work, and an area for outdoor learning. We also learned about Bel Aire’s sister school in Liberia and how the school had raised money and built a well for drinking so that students there don’t have to walk 3-5 hours each day to get water, and can use the time learning instead.

With this new awareness, we went back to our office to study the drawings from students. We were amazed by what is in these kids’ minds. The drawings reflect the world and vision they need. We created lists of the icons they drew and the words they used and created a word cloud to help us analyze their designs.

We analyzed the similar and different programs and came up with a revised drawing that included the key components.

The design is pretty much driven by the kids’ programs, and we found a home for the mosaic path, art display, and outdoor learning as well.

The final design incorporates the conflict resolution mosaic path, which resolves the grade changes at the lower hillside and provides a terrace for watching sports activities. The canopy structure uses donations to create recycled sails that can be pulled out to provide shade, making it easier for remote learning with mobile devices, and a comfortable escape from the black or white boards inside. We also created a series of new vine structures by reusing the existing fence and a solar-powered drinking fountain as a reminder of their contribution to their sister school in Liberia.

With the exposure of the project in the news, the school was able to obtain the preliminary funding to get the project going. It is estimated that phase 1 will be complete by August 2012 when students return school from summer break.

Collapse post

Cancel

Posted by Scott Chuang
in Social Impact
on 19 July, 2012

Be the first to comment

Share this post
Facebook
Twitter

September 2011 marks the three year anniversary of the opening of the new California Academy of Sciences museum. As the project landscape architect — led by John Loomis in our Sausalito office — we look back at the green roof design and its performance. Living Roof Performance Stormwater Capture The 106,500 square foot green roof… Read more »

Living Roof Performance

Stormwater Capture

The 106,500 square foot green roof absorbs 3.5 million gallons of rainwater each year, reduces stormwater runoff by 93%.

Natural Building Ventilation

Cool air runs down the steep slopes of the hills on the roof, funnels it into the open-air plaza and vents warm air from the building through the skylights. Skylights are mounted with sensors that gauge the interior temperatures and automatically open at a given threshold. The roof keeps the interior temperature an average of 10 degrees cooler than a standard roof would and, thanks to the evapo-transporation of the retained moisture on the roof surface, animals and people benefit from its natural cooling effect.

Energy Production

The 60,000 photovoltaic cells that surround the living roof creeate shade for pedestrians below and generate approximately 213,000 kilowatt-hours of energy per year. This prevents the release of 405,000 pounds of greenhouse gas emission into the air.

Public Education

Its role in promoting public awareness of living roofs was part of the reason the project was awarded LEED Platinum certification. The museum expected to see 1.6 million visitors annually, but the actually visitor count has far exceeded those projections.

Native Habitat

The living roof is planted with nine native California plant species including Fragaria chiloensis, Prunella vulgaris, Armeria maritime, Sedum spathulitholium, Layia platyglossa, Lupinus bicolor, Eschscholzia californica, Plantago erecta, and Lasthenia californica. Each native plant attracts a variety of native insects, birds, moths, wasps, bees, and other bugs essential to the bay area ecosystem. We tested, with the help of our ecology consultant Rana Creek, a total of 25 native plant species on site for their resilience within the micro climate of the museums location. Read the California Academy’s living-roof habitat monitoring report.

Heat Island Mitigation

While evidence of heat island mitigation is anecdotal, The museum area is cooler than average surrounding area temperatures, but this could be largely attributed to its location within Golden Gate Park. The fact that the roof is irrigated to keep the plants looking good all year likely contributes to lower termperatures than if the plants were allowed to go dormant during the warmest months. The new building footprint is also 1.5 acres less than the original and these 1.5 acres were returned to the site as green space. On the flip side, arguments can be made that the building itself obstructs cool air movement from the ocean. There are currently no reports that confirm or deny these claims.

Cost Comparison

- The total project cost was $488 million.

- The final construction cost was $258 million.

- The cost of achieving LEED Platinum was 8 percent of the hard cost of the project.

- The cost of the green roof was $19 per square foot.

- The cost of the green roof construction was an additional $9-16 per square foot, yielding a total of $28 – $35 per square foot, approximately 3 to 4 times the cost of traditional roofs (including cool roofs qualifying for LEED solar reflectance credit), which cost approximately $6 to $10 per square foot.

Challenges

- The use of irrigation on the green roof over time is still subject to a debate. While the design intent is to remove irrigation systems and let the green roof run dry during the summer seasons (representative of a native California landscape) – the image of the green roof has become so iconic that the roof is still being maintained – and irrigated – today. The long-term vision is to remove the irrigation system.

- The roof can only be accessed through the elevator to the roof. Unfortunately, the maintenance crew has to use the same elevator – and there is no storage capability for supplies on the roof.

- It remains to be seen how the roof will last over time. Most buildings require long-term weathering and re-waterproofing. In 40- or 60-year’s time, what will be the procedure for updating and maintaining the roof and building, particularly one of innovative and unique construction?

- Deemed a “high maintenance superstar,” by writers such as Linda McIntyre (LAM), the roof is both celebrated and lamented for its high cost in time, money, and energy. While critics state that the cost is excessive and could have been used to implement a greater quantity of green roofs; McIntyre points out the difficulty of quantifying the success of a design that “captures the imaginations of millions of people,” that teaches and educates millions of people, communicating that design and sustainability matters and inspiring dozens of new green designs as a result.

Image Gallery: