Category: design

Educational programming and energy-efficient engineering go hand in hand at the new Arlington High School, where HMFH led an extensive coordination and collaboration process between school officials, engineers and community members to achieve an efficient and comfortable learning environment. As everyday beneficiaries of well-designed spaces, occupants often take for granted the many building systems working together seamlessly to ensure comfort, health and wellbeing. The new all-electric Arlington High School will demonstrate this concept when its first phase opens in February of 2022.

An extensive educational program, complex phased construction schedule, and polluted soils on site that prohibited the use of geothermal wells, required the design team to think critically and creatively to produce a facility in line with Arlington’s ambitious sustainability goals. The solution balances the use of Variable Refrigerant Flow (VRF) systems–which supply space heating and cooling throughout the school without relying on fossil-fuels–with a carefully zoned educational plan that limits the hours of operation for these units, reducing the 408,000 sf school’s energy use to an impressive pEUI of 24.7.

The team’s proactive approach to sustainable design involved close collaboration with school administration and faculty early in the design process to identify the optimal configuration of educational program and building systems zoning layout. Grouping programs with similar operational schedules allows entire zones of mechanical systems to be turned off when the spaces are not occupied, limiting excess energy use in the school and contributing to saving 33% in energy costs over baseline.

When the facility is complete in 2024, the new high school will be the largest public building in Arlington and represent a shift in the Town toward a more climate conscious, resilient future.

JQUS serves an urban and predominantly minority student population for whom access to natural light, fresh air, and connections to nature are critical to their health and wellness. The new rooftop is an urban oasis with open space and gardens, where ample plantings filter pollutants for optimal air quality. To ensure that the entire school is isolated from the ambient ground-level air pollution in this transit-oriented location, fresh air ventilation is captured and distributed from roof level to interior spaces on floors below.

To prioritize mental health through design, a mindfulness garden provides a calm, contemplative space complete with meadow grasses, meandering stone paths, and intermittent benches. Here, urban students have a safe, relaxing, and peaceful place to unwind in a natural setting.

Beyond programmatic benefits, the JQUS green roof significantly improves the building’s environmental sustainability.

The planting system absorbs precipitation to slow stormwater runoff and lowers both the rooftop and surrounding air temperature to mitigate heat island effect and reduce the building’s cooling loads (as well as associated costs). JQUS’s rooftop contains a blend of native plant species, promoting biodiversity in its urban environment.

The new Chapman Middle School serves 1,470 students in grades six through eight with state-of-the-art learning and gathering spaces. As the largest middle school in Massachusetts, student well-being was a focal point of the design and drove many of the project’s sustainability goals, from fostering a sense of belonging for all students to encouraging a healthy lifestyle.

With Bristol Aggie’s unique curriculum rooted in science, environmental, and agriculture-based education, the new Center for Science and the Environment (CSE) is a living-learning lab that promotes hands-on research and experiential learning. Close ties between the school and the landscape led to sustainability goals focused on water conservation, which now reduce indoor water use in the CSE by 68%.

The renovation and addition to Bristol Aggie’s primary academic building, Gilbert Hall, showcases the environmental benefits of reusing existing buildings. The 1935 structure was redesigned to accommodate modern learning environments, maintain the building’s original character, and save on embodied carbon compared to new construction.

While renewing and expanding the Bristol County Agricultural High School campus, HMFH had the unique opportunity to design two buildings with comparable program and scale. Using Tally, a Revit plugin that quantifies the environmental impact of building materials ₂, we conducted a life cycle assessment analyzing the products specified in both the renovation of Gilbert Hall, a 72,000 SF academic building from 1935, and the new Center for Science and the Environment (CSE), a 73,500 SF academic building, to weigh the benefits of renovations vs. new construction.

A life cycle assessment (LCA) is an analysis of a project’s impact throughout its lifespan, from the gathering and transportation of raw materials, to reuse after a building’s end of life. A completed LCA evaluates factors including global warming potential, acidification, eutrophication, smog formation, ozone depletion, and depletion of nonrenewable energy sources. In North America, there is currently not enough data to include site or mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) systems in a LCA despite their significant impact on a building’s sustainability. Therefore, our analysis of Gilbert Hall and the CSE focuses on the environmental impact of building materials.

CSE: 353.3 kg CO2eq/m²
GH: 259.41 kg CO2eq/m²

The newly constructed CSE features a highly efficient exterior wall design, while Gilbert Hall excels in its minimal impact by reusing the existing structural elements.

Standards for material transparency do exist, and a primary goal of HMFH’s research for Bristol-Plymouth is to identify and specify materials that are proven to be safe by fully disclosing ingredient and manufacturing information through Declare. Declare is a platform for manufacturers to provide essential information on the material makeup of their products and compliance with standards such as the Living Building Challenge (LBC) Red List and LBC Watch List, which outline materials, chemicals, and elements harmful to human health and the environment.³

Drawing from over 50 years of experience designing K-12 public schools, HMFH is researching and vetting hundreds of materials to develop a baseline list of products that contribute to a healthy learning environment and are optimized for K-12 architecture. The intent of this research is twofold: first, to provide a list of healthy building materials to serve as a reference point for future projects, and second, to push manufacturers to disclose the chemical makeup of their materials and ultimately eliminate chemicals of concern present in these products.

Three 30,000-gallon underground cisterns collect water for reuse while rain gardens throughout the school’s parking lots filter stormwater runoff from the site and mitigate heat island effects. Together with the use of low-flow fixtures, these measures reduce the building’s annual water consumption by 45 percent.

Located less than 300 feet from a busy six-lane highway, the new facility responds to the challenge of providing optimal air quality with rooftop mechanical air handling units positioned with their intakes facing away from the highway and prevailing winds. This enables displacement ventilation systems to distribute clean air throughout the interior, bringing 20 percent more fresh air into the spaces at low velocity without the typical costs and acoustical distractions associated with conventional mechanical systems.

The new school represents a transformation of Saugus Public Schools to reflect the town’s vision for innovative, equitable facilities. Creating a welcoming, accessible and inclusive environment for all was critical to the success of the design. All-gender toilet facilities are conveniently located and used by faculty and students alike. Special education spaces feature tunable LED fixtures, giving teachers flexibility to adjust light intensity and color temperature to help modulate behavior and respond to light sensitivity. A special classroom on the third floor provides a designated space for medically fragile community members with exceptional views and access to a rooftop classroom.

Located at the threshold between the school’s academic wings and central hub for student activity, the exploratory labs bridge the transition from shared public space to academic zones. The labs are housed within three distinct tower-like, top-lit structures, or pods, that utilize their unique and expressive architectural forms to represent the flexible and collaborative nature of the interior program spaces. Each positioned at the entrance to one of the three academic wings extending off the cafeteria, the exploratory labs shape the organic layout of this central space. Distinct cladding materials define a unique identity for each space: a metal pod, a wood pod, and a glass pod.

Chapman Middle School’s culinary lab occupies the first floor of the metal pod and provides a unique opportunity for students to incorporate cooking, cultural awareness, and nutrition in their curriculum at the middle school level. The spacious layout of the lab positions a teaching room for lecture-based learning adjacent to cooking stations for hands-on lessons.

Notable features:

• Flexible classroom furniture for lecture-based lessons on culinary practices, world food cultures and healthy nutrition
• Universally designed cooking stations used for hands-on lessons include 4-burner stoves, convection ovens, char broilers and microwaves
• Mobile teaching demonstration station with cooktop induction units
• Large openings to convenient transportation of materials
• Solid surface counters and washable walls and ceilings for simplified maintenance

Located directly above the culinary lab, the expeditionary learning lab provides a flexible learning space geared towards self-directed, collaborative and project-based activities. Varied seating and table types can be re-arranged to outfit the space for a wide range of lessons from presentations, to class discussions, to small group projects.

Notable features:

• Designated presentation space and teaching wall with large LCD monitor
• Small group collaboration spaces with individual touch screen monitors
• Flexible and varied furniture for a variety of hands-on activities including research, writing, reading, math and science

To accommodate Weymouth’s robust theater programs, the first floor of the wood pod provides teaching space outside of the auditorium and a black box theater for students to study, rehearse and put on small-scale performances. This flexible space is not only a valuable resource for the emerging middle school theater program, but also for the high school theater program and local drama groups. Co-locating theater arts and the broadcasting lab within the same pod enables the programs to share a control center.

Notable features:

• An overhead tension wire grid – a fall-safe technical level space where students learn the behind-the-scenes ins and outs of theatrical lighting and rigging
• Motorized blackout shades block any light penetrating the space for Blackbox performances and let light in during lessons and rehearsals
• Moveable furniture in the performance room can be used for audiences, lectures or removed entirely

The broadcast lab overlooks the theater arts space below and offers students state-of-the-art equipment and spaces to explore the technical aspects of video and audio production. The lab will also be utilized for student organizations and a large after-school program.

Notable features:

• State-of-the-art broadcasting equipment including a soundproof control center, recording studio with green screen and mounted LED studio light fixtures
• Windows from the control center to both the adjacent recording studio and to the theater arts space below to allow both programs to utilize the high-tech control and recording equipment
• Ability to broadcast throughout the school or town-wide

Chapman Middle School’s new media center, which resides on the first level of the glass pod, introduces contemporary design elements typically seen in higher education spaces without compromising the function of a traditional school library. A double-height open plan layout combined with tall openings in the frosted resin cladding establish a visual connection between the media center and the Town Square, while a variety of seating types and breakout spaces make the space fully accessible.

Notable features:

• Flexible and varied seating conducive to a wide variety of learning styles
• Designated spaces for casual study, small group learning, and large group meetings
• Operable glass wall enables the meeting room to open up into the flexible learning space for larger assemblies
• Circulation desk centrally located to monitor media center activity
• Located near the main entrance for after-hours community use
• Skylights and tall openings introduce daylight into this space at the heart of the school