Last week, SMMA was awarded the BSA Design Sustainability Award for its work on Winchester High School. According to the BSA website, the award recognizes “contributions to the built environment which demonstrate beauty and design excellence as a celebration of place, triple bottom line (people, planet, and profit) response and appropriateness, exemplary and measurable environmental performance and conservation, innovation in practice, process, and/or technology utilization, and measurable social benefits and/or impacts beyond the site.”
SMMA’s approach to renovating the 288,840 sf Winchester High School, a 1970s Brutalist-style concrete school serving 1,370 students, transformed the brutal into the beautiful, the rigid into the flexible, and the imposing into the inviting. Despite rigorous cost estimation and significant financial pressure, the firm retained the vast majority of planned sustainability features resulting in LEED v3 Gold Certification.
Sustainability features present in the new Winchester High School:
- LEED v3 Gold Certification
- Extensive Energy Modeling
- Daylight Modeling
- Eco-Charrettes, Workshops with Community
- 46% Energy Performance Better than Code
- High Performance Building Enclosure
- LED Lighting, Digital Network Controls
- Chilled Beam HVAC System
- Displacement Ventilation
- 36% Water Efficiency
- 83% Construction Waste Recycling
- 92% Building Re-Use
- 24% Recycled Content Materials
- 85% Certified Wood
- Low VOC Materials
- Building Enclosure Commissioning
- Enhanced Commissioning
- Extensive Building Flush Out
- Kitchen Composting Program
- Student Garden for Science Curriculum
- Brownfield Redevelopment
- Joint Use of Community Facilities
- Green Housekeeping
- Integrated Pest Management
- Enhanced Acoustical Performance
SMMA’s choice to reuse the most durable portions of the original building, combined with extensive application of sustainable strategies within the project budget, helped establish a responsible and beautiful 21st century school that supports a green learning environment and allows students to develop a foundational knowledge of sustainability.
