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Air pollution

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Circular building design

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Circular Economy in refurbished & new school buildings

13. November 2019

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DEM (Danish Energy Management) includes sustainability and circular economy in new school buildings

The first element of sustainability lies in the optimization of resources by keeping all students and personnel on-site through the duration of the project. To do this, temporary teaching facilities were built, and moved to accommodate two stages of the project.
The project includes a beautifully refurbished four-story, 90-year-old school building of 6,500 m2, the construction of two new school buildings of 5,500 m2, and a total area of approximately 10,000 m2.

The two new buildings contain an important component of circular economy, as the outside surfaces are laid with recycled bricks. Using cleaned and recycled bricks instead of producing new bricks does not only save resources, but also saves a large amount of CO 2 that would have been used in the production of new bricks. A positive side effect of incorporating circular economy is that the two new buildings look a lot more like the surrounding residential buildings, which were built around 1910. Today, red bricks are hard to come by and/or very expensive, as all of this clay has been excavated in Denmark.

In the existing building, all areas were refurbished to include automatic, de mand-controlled optimized ventilation, automatic lighting control, new lighting fix tures with LED, and a Building Management System (BMS) that controls all of it, including the renovated heating system. This is a very large component of sustainability for this refurbished building, as all of these elements contribute to energy savings and efficiency within the building. In addition, a new internal elevator now gives access to all floors, meaning disability access and fulfilling requirements of the newest Danish building regulations. The re furbished project has also created a better connection though the buildings.

The school yard areas have also been completely renewed, with a football field which is open to the public neighborhood, providing green space and contributing to sustainable urbanization. Below the field is a large storm tank/rainwater system fit to hold back more than 150.000 liters of water, thus delaying rainfall from the public sewer system. The new buildings have a photovoltaic array consisting of 21,5 kWp (which is equivalent to approx. 21,500 KWh per year), and all the buildings have been equipped with a weather-based, outside solar screening system and new, energy efficient windows.

SUSTAINABILITY MEASUREMENT