西雅图的Bertschi学校参与建设生活挑战

According to the国际生活建筑研究所, the Living Building Challenge “defines the most advanced measure of sustainability in the built environment possible today and acts to diminish the gap between current limits and ideal solutions. This certification program covers all building at all scales and is a unified tool for transformative design, allowing us to envision a future that is Socially Just, Culturally Rich, and Ecologically Benign.”

"To make this work required a process, we had to sit with the teacher and figure out exactly what her electricity needs were for the classroom. Then engineers took that information and calculated the specific wattages."Chris Hellstern, KMD Architects, on the challenge of meeting net-zero energy requirements.

Currently in version 2.0, the Challenge seeks to promote buildings that achievenet-zero energyand water usage. It also advances progressive sustainability solutions such as urban agriculture. To earn Living Building status, buildings must demonstrate that they are meeting the rating system’s performance requirements for a full year of operation. If it succeeds, the Living Science Classroom will be the first Living Building in Washington State.

生活科学教室的设计，并通过团队在西雅图的绿色建筑专业人士谁联合，形成恢复性的设计团队建立无偿。斯泰西·史沫特莱和克里斯HellsternKMD建筑师initially organized the group.

Says Smedley, “We attended Cascadia’s ‘unconference’ in May 2009. The seminars on the Living Building Challenge got us excited, and we began brainstorming to see if there was any way we could get involved in designing one of these buildings. We knew we needed to find a small scale project -- smaller than the ones KMD usually does -- which would allow us to start building our knowledge.”

“在这同时，我们上了Bertschi学校参观。在谈话的主人，我们发现，他们在这个时候活的建筑挑战是不为人所熟知的外面打算最终加入了科学教室校园，甚至有过建设住建的希望......这工业，补充说：” Hellstern。

It only took a few emails to colleagues to assemble the Restorative Design Collective. Together the team took the project from its conceptual phase through construction documents, making great strides in furthering the industry’s proficiency in deep green building practices.

To meet the Challenge’s requirement that buildings have a net-zero energy usage, the Living Science Classroom will usesolar panelsas a renewable energy source to supply all of the building’s energy needs.

“To make this work required a process,” says Hellstern. “We had to sit with the teacher and figure out exactly what her electricity needs were for the classroom. Then engineers took that information and calculated the specific wattages.”

Just as the building is not permitted to pull a net positive amount of energy from the city’s electric grid, it is not permitted to use city water or discharge wastewater into the storm system, so rainwater is harvested and stored in a cistern. UV and carbon filters have been installed to make the water potable. Currently, however, the building is hooked up to the city water supply to meet its potable water needs because of local code requirements; governing bodies have been slow to allow commercial properties to manage their own water supply and treatment. “But health departments are definitely moving in that direction,” says Smedley. “They may require some regular testing and monitoring as we move to on-site treatment systems.”

“在设计过程的开始，我们要求学生，他们希望在新大楼看到的东西。他们有很多的创意，其中之一是让大楼内的河流。” 斯泰西·史沫特莱，KMD建筑师

To handle wastewater, a green roof will provide biofiltration of storm runoff, andgreywater将被热带植物的植物墙的内部处理。它是净化后的水将被保存并重复使用。“我们不会有一个黑水的问题，”史沫特莱说，“因为我们已经安装了一堆肥厕所”。

教室的可持续特征将杆aged as an educational resource for Bertschi School students, as well as for the general public, who will have access to tours of the facility once it is complete. “Monitoring equipment for water and PV power usage, in the form of digital readouts, is located around the classroom,” says Hellstern. “Teachers plan on using this as a teaching tool. For example, the math class will make charts and graphs using the data.” Also used in the curriculum will be plants from the school garden (which fulfils a requirement of the Living Building Challenge version 2.0 that the building support urban agriculture). “We included local vegetation -- the plants that native cultures used. And these plants will be used not just for food, but for things like art projects, where berries will be used for dyes and grasses will be used for weaving,” says Smedley.

Some of the classroom’s most remarkable features were conceptualized by the students themselves. “At the beginning of the design process, we asked the students what they wanted to see in the new building. They had a lot of creative ideas, and one of them was to have a river inside the building,” says Smedley. “So the concrete floor slab has a channel in it, and when it rains, water from the downspout flows through the space.” In this way, the kids can observe firsthand the building’s rainwater harvesting.

史沫特莱和Hellstern是赞赏的事实，KMD十分愿意支持他们投入Bertschi学校项目通过恢复性设计集体的时间和精力。最后，行业整体将受益于这些努力，为设计师准备向前走可持续设计到一个新的水平。