We ask a lot of our schools. We expect them to educate our children, provide safe environments, give inspiration to artistic ideas and offer outlets for expanding skills. Those burdens don’t fall to the teachers and staff alone. The structure, too, plays a huge role, and the new Sherwood Middle School in Shrewsbury, Mass., fulfills all those promises. The exterior presents an inviting and inspiring edifice that helps make children want to attend and the interior offers dynamic, flexible learning centers that give educators the tools they need to succeed.
But Sherwood gives the community something more-a sustainably built structure that features proven green techniques and products as well as an opportunity to teach the fifth and sixth graders about their surroundings.
Lamoureux Pagano & Associates, Worcester, Mass., brought its considerable design experience to the program and met the stringent requirements of the Massachusetts Collaborative for High Performance Schools (MA-CHPS), which calls for not only sustainability but a defined approach to using the building as an educational tool. According to project architect and firm vice president, Kathryn Crockett, AIA, LEED AP: “The state is strongly encouraging this for all public schools, which is a terrific thing. Massachusetts Collaborative for High Performance Schools is a broad-based view of sustainability. It includes factors such as recyclable material; whether it’s locally produced or not; user understanding of the building, so where it’s a public school how it could be used as a tool for the students to understand sustainability; encouraging recycling programs; indoor air quality certainly, and obviously, energy efficiency is a big, big part of it.”
Great envelope
Among the elements that Crockett and her team used to meet these standards was an R-26 wall, which is about twice as high as required by code. Crockett specified 66,000 square feet of Moon Township, Pa.-based CENTRIA’s MetalWrap series insulated composite backup panels and Concept Series panels to clad the wall. “We looked at reducing energy consumption as a baseline,” says Crockett. The insulated composite panels “served as an air vapor barrier and sheathing all in one,” she adds. “That allowed the contractor to enclose the building relatively quickly.”
The high-performance exterior envelope reduced energy consumption significantly, and during hot summer days allows the school to chose to use only a dehumidification system with fresh air intake instead of operating the full-blown air conditioning system. The benefits of the envelope were noticed even earlier, though. “It sure reduced conditioning costs during construction,” says Crockett.
Solar gain
Lamoureux Pagano & Associates did more than just button up a tight building envelope, though. Taking advantage of a long, windowless stretch along the south-facing, two-story gymnasium wall, Crockett specified Allentown, Pa.-based ATAS International Inc.’s InSpire Solar Air heating system. “It was not part of the MA-CHPS program, but it obviously helped,” says Crocket, referring to the energy efficiency performance of the building. “They mounted perforated panels 12 inches from the insulated panels. It creates an open chimney effect. As the air heats up behind the dark bronze panels, it rises and is driven into the gym by a fan system.”
The solar wall was an essential part of the complete sustainable building design.
For the students
A school is only successful if it works for the students and staff, though, and Lamoureux Pagano & Associates paid careful attention to the scale and floor plan of the building. Sherwood Middle School has more than 900 students, so the building structure needed to be quite large to accommodate them all. But fifth and sixth graders can be intimidated by such a vast scale, so Crockett used several methods to reduce the scale. “Students enter on the mid-level,” she says. The school is three stories tall, but the ground slopes away from the entrance, so it only has a two-story elevation at the entrance, making it more comfortable for the students.
There are clusters of classrooms in wings that offer flexible learning spaces, including large sunlit shared spaces, and do so at a scale that is more comfortable for middle-school students. Each cluster has its own palette and is easily identifiable, which helps place students in the large building. The north portion of the building features art rooms, music rooms and a media center. “You don’t want sunlight glaring into those rooms,” says Crockett.
As to the educational portion of the design, Sherwood Middle School has established a Green Squad, comprising students who are committed to learning about and raising awareness of ecological issues. The group is one of eight student voice crews, and the move to the new building provided the group an opportunity to research, report and advocate on LED lighting, the green linoleum flooring, the use of night-sky lighting and the solar energy collection system.
For the community
For the Shrewsbury community, this new edifice presented another challenge and opportunity. The building is situated in the middle of a residential neighborhood and part of a community that is very proud of its history, which reaches back to well before the Revolutionary War. (The high school nickname is the Colonials.) Metal wall panels in such neighborhoods are often unwelcome. Not in Shrewsbury. “They have a lot of pride in their history and architecture,” says Crockett. “They really seem to understand this is a progressive form of architecture and it aligns with their educational program.”
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Sherwood Middle School, Shrewsbury, Mass.
Owner: Shrewsbury Public School District
Architect: Lamoureux Pagano & Associates Inc., Worcester, Mass.
General contractor: Gilbane Building Co., Providence, R.I.
Metal wall panel installer: LYMO Construction, Merrimack, N.H.
Curtainwall: EFCO, Monett, Mo., www.efcocorp.com
Metal wall panels: CENTRIA, Moon Township, Pa., www.centriaperformance.comand Alucobond by 3A Composites USA, Mooresville, N.C., www.alucobond.com
Passive solar collector:
ATAS International Inc., Allentown, Pa., www.atas.com