Prefab construction nearly completed, preparations for shipping to Hawaii
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Project update November 2011 – Energy neutral portable classroom, Honolulu, HI, USA
Modular construction allows for very tight seams and joints. The typical tolerances of a manufactured building fabricated in sections aren’t always enough for a high performance building like this. 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.
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Project update November 2011 – Energy neutral portable classroom, Honolulu, HI, USA
The building is being constructed by Blazer Industries, a modular building manufacturer in Aumsville, Oregon, whose factory is large enough to construct the entire building, allowing improved troubleshooting for this first unit.
The first of the classrooms in Anderson Anderson Architecture’s Net Zero Energy Classroom (ZEBRA Project) are being prefabricated in Oregon and shipped to Hawaii for deployment in early 2012 at an elementary school in Ewa Beach. The Holcim Awards Acknowledgement prize-winning classroom was designed in San Francisco, California. The building is being constructed by a modular building manufacturer in Aumsville, Oregon, whose factory is large enough to construct the entire building, allowing improved troubleshooting for this first unit.
Last updated: November 27, 2011 Ewa Beach, HI, USA
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.
It will then be shipped to Hawaii in four modular pieces via ocean freight and tractor trailers. In Hawaii, the building will then be installed on-site. A big advantage of pre-assembling the building prior to shipping is that the team can tune its performance as a whole system. Digital Revit modeling helped the architects during the design process to anticipate the general placement of fixtures within the classroom, and now the “full-scale modeling” of the actual construction allows for fine tuning in-place for exact fixture heights and bulb selections.
Modular construction allows for very tight seams and joints. The typical tolerances of a manufactured building fabricated in sections aren’t always enough for a high performance building like this. For example, where some sections join, there are multiple layers of flashing that come together and need to seal tightly.
The solar panels are integrated into the classroom’s roof, and the building will ship with them fully installed. Peter Anderson highlighted the significance of this by saying “Most people think of a solar unit as a completely separate and overly technical part of the building process. In this case, the solar design is so functionally, aesthetically, and physically integrated with the design that it just becomes normal. It’s no longer an add-on, it is part of the factory-controlled process and arrives fully assembled and operational when the building comes to the site.”
Plans to monitor and report performance
Once the building is installed, the team will monitor its performance. The first year will be focused on validating the building’s energy performance and ensuring that the team’s projections for net zero energy use are being met. Energy use, solar electricity generation, temperature, and humidity will be reported in real-time. Following validation of performance, the Department of Education in Hawaii plans to deploy the design more broadly.