North Shore Community School Addition

Duluth Township, Minnesota

Firm

TKDA

Client

North Shore Community School

Area

10,000 sq.ft.

Total Cost

$3,100,000

Completion Date

08/2016

John Gregor, ColdSnap Photography

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Design Team
Brian Morse (Project Manager); Greg Cooper (Project Architect); Chris Lawson (Mechanical Engineer); Todd Volkmeier (Electrical Engineer); Fred Pasno, Rob Schweich (Electrical Designers); Troy Androli (Structural Engineer); James Kilborn (Mechanical Designer); Jon Loye (Civil Engineer)

North Shore Community School is a K-6 environmental learning charter school along the north shore of Lake Superior between Duluth and Two Harbors, Minnesota. The school emphasizes environmental stewardship and hands-on exploration of the natural world. The addition has four classrooms, an art lab, restrooms, small conference rooms, and greenhouse.

Achieving an environmentally responsible design was critical to the project. The mechanical system included high-efficiency HVAC equipment with displacement demand ventilation, geothermal heat pumps, and low-flow plumbing fixtures. A ground-mounted photovoltaic solar panel array, coupled with occupancy and daylight sensor control LED light fixtures, significantly reduced energy consumption. In addition, each classroom used a small passive solar heating system along the south-facing windows to harvest heat gained during the day for later release when temperatures drop overnight. These systems not only save energy and support the school’s environmental mission, but also serve as active learning tools employed by teachers. TKDA developed an energy model to obtain a 20% energy savings over a conventional code-compliant building.