The heart of the project’s green building strategy is a huge 6.5 acre “slinky” geothermal source field located 12 feet underneath the ball field’s turf. The system tremendously reduces the energy needed to heat and cool the building, and it ensures quieter classrooms since noisy AC systems don’t constantly kick on.
The other key design detail is the quality daylighting — since the buildings have an east-west orientation, south-facing windows have diffusing glass while northern windows allow for good ambient lighting. Signs describing green design elements are located throughout the campus and on touchscreen monitors in the main hallways. Take a look and you’ll see all the LEED points the project earned for it’s Gold certification, and if that seems boring then switch to the display that tells how much electricity the building’s solar panels are producing right now. The signs are there to draw attention to things that are often taken for granted — like the 40 Solatubes® in the gym ceiling.
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