Page 111 - Designing for Zero Carbon - Case Studies of All-Electric Buildings

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Site Plan for the new Claire Lilienthal Scott Campus (Courtesy of Lionakis)
Design Process and Low-Energy, Zero-Carbon Design Strategies
The site included one existing two-story building (built circa 1930) in addition to eight bungalows, which were designated for replacement. The existing building was scheduled for renovation as a separate project immediately after the new building was completed. It would ultimately serve grades 3-5 while the new building would be designed to accommodate grades 6-8, currently housed in the bungalows. Two classrooms would be added to the program for the new building along with a new gymnasium facility for the mini-campus, bringing the total new middle school facility to ten classrooms plus the gymnasium.
Planning Concept and General Design Considerations
Given site limitations, the design parti consists of two two-story classroom wings attached to the gymnasium. The two wings are canted to create a commons area between them, a natural gath- ering space for students and teachers. One wing hugs the south property line along North Point Street and is adjacent to one façade of the existing historic building. The second wing faces the shared play yard to the north. (See Site Plan)
Six of the classrooms are standard size for about 35 students each. The remaining four are oversized classrooms for special purpose use such as Maker Labs, science labs, art and fitness equipment. Two of the latter are located on the ground floor and open directly to the yard via large rolling garage doors to enable indoor-outdoor use when the weather permits.
Meetings with neighborhood groups resulted in the agreement that the new building along the street frontage would align with the existing building and have the same type of visible roof form. Most importantly, there would be no added height due to building equipment, including solar PV panels. This created a challenge to reaching the “design standard” of the project, set at 20 kBtu/ sq.ft per year by the earlier District studies, and still achieving ZNE performance. In fact, early analysis indicated that the energy produced by the PV system installed on the remaining two roofs would be only approximately 13.5 kBtu/sq.ft. per year.
Therefore, the design team set about devising various strategies to lower the EUI of the building to this target number so that ZNE performance could be achieved.
SFUSD CLAIRE LILIENTHAL MIDDLE SCHOOL
CASE STUDY NO. 5
Designing for Zero Carbon: Volume 1
97
(Left) View along North Point Street, existing historic build- ing at left and new middle school street facade beyond. (Photo: © Technical Imagery Studios)