In considering the many sustainable issues related to school buildings, most of the built-in sustainable solutions will have been addressed at the very front end of the school’s life process, through the briefing, design and construction stages. However in use, the way the buildings are operated will by far have the greatest impact over it’s whole life on the environment, particulalry with regards to energy, water and waste, and through the way it can support it’s community to develop and grow.
Evidence gathered from the few buildings that have been objectively evaluated, suggests that environmental performance is often poor compared to design intent. WIth the current 15 year government initative to modernise the UK’s 3,500 school buildings comes the opportunity to create a real understanding of how our new building’s are performing and use this evidence to influence the future phases of the school re-building programme.
Feilden Clegg Bradley Studio and Wilkinson Eyre have commissioned evaluations of some of their recently completed low-energy design Academies. In collaboration with Buro Happold and Arup the focus is on evaluating both the building’s environmental performance and the users response, by working with both the staff and the pupils.