The Energy neutral portable classroom won the Green Building Category at the “World of Modular” conference held in San Antonio, TX, USA in March 2014. The portable classroom is designed to provide an optimized educational environment for students and teachers while advancing sustainable design principles.The award was presented at the annual conference of the Modular Building Institute, and was shared by Anderson Anderson Architecture along with project affiliates, Blazer Industries and Hawaii Modular Space.

The first of the classrooms in the Net Zero Energy Classroom (ZEBRA Project) are being prefabricated off-site and will soon be shipped to Hawaii for deployment in early 2012 at an elementary school in Ewa Beach. The classroom is being constructed by a modular building manufacturer in Oregon, Blazer Industries. Blazer’s factory is large enough to construct the entire building, allowing improved troubleshooting for this first unit.

The jury recognized the project for its sound general concept with an impressive teaching capacity. Through its potential for transferability, even to remote locations, the project delivers a strong contribution. With its spatial and functional qualities it directly supports education in the classrooms, and enhances the awareness for the systems by their direct visibility as well as the monitoring and Internet-publishing of performance.

This portable classroom uses highly prefabricated modules that can be assembled to create different sized units on location in Hawaii and elsewhere. Its design and construction principle is optimized for this purpose, applying light materials such as steel, rigid foam sandwich floor, wood framing, double wall metal cladding, FSC-certified engineered-wood boards and natural finished recycled rice straw panels. The energy concept is based on a set of photo-voltaic roof panels and a ground-cooled water bag to cool water. A small windmill produces additional energy on site, while the roof design provides natural daylight and natural ventilation – thus minimizing energy consumption.