Built to Last

Another challenge that all educational buildings face is durability. How will the building perform over time? Schools, colleges, and universities are places of high-volume and constant use, often throughout the entire year. Every component of the building must be designed, specified, and constructed to withstand the constant wear and tear of students and staff while remaining functional, safe, and aesthetically appealing in all seasons.

High-traffic areas like entrances and exits contend with moisture issues when rain and snow are brought into the space on coats and shoes. For interiors, hallways and communal areas are prone to wall damage as educational equipment—consider the daily load and movement of audio/visual projectors, book carts, and mobile partitions—are moved from space to space. Overall, this combination of young people in large social groups has to accommodate activities and athletics that are unique to educational buildings but not as common in corporate, commercial, or retail spaces. Few CEOs engage in hacky sack—or indoor soccer—during lunch breaks.

On the exterior of educational buildings, the durability of rainscreens, siding, roofing materials, windows, and doors are all essential to maintain the integrity of the building envelope. This is where the design and specification of building materials and products become high priorities for architects and designers to ensure that the building remains safe and secure to protect students and staff.

The challenges of noise control, safety, and durability are a common connection between educational buildings of all sizes and types, but fortunately so is the set of potential solutions. Next, we will look at the opportunities architects have to design educational buildings and specify materials to address these issues.

OPPORTUNITIES IN EDUCATIONAL BUILDING DESIGN AND SPECIFICATIONS

Recognizing the specific challenges educational buildings face is the first step in resolving potential distractions and barriers to successful knowledge transfer to students. The next step is to identify design elements, building materials, and systems that can accomplish the goals of reducing uncontrolled noise, creating a safe space for students, and increasing the overall durability of the structure.

Creating a Sound Solution

Noise control within educational buildings should be managed to reduce uncontrolled sound generated on the exterior as well as the interior of the building. In the end, it does not matter where the noise comes from; it must be controlled and contained to acceptable levels before it enters and becomes detrimental to learning spaces.

On the exterior of the building, sound sources are numerous and often unpredictable. Designing an educational building based on current conditions may not provide adequate noise control for students in the future.

Traffic noise is one of the main distractions for students, and though patterns and volume of traffic may change during the day, the nearby presence of a street or highway will remain a constant challenge. Similarly, as educational buildings expand with development, nearby neighborhoods might grow with construction noise that can increase or decrease over time.

“Roofs play a critical role in the acoustic strategy of a building. They can be exposed to airborne sounds like airplanes and road traffic, as well as impact sounds like rain or maintenance crews,” notes Hamed Kayello, Product Manager at Georgia-Pacific. “Low slope roofs, especially if they’re metal and lightweight, should consider their desired acoustic performance during the design stage. Acoustic flat roof boards can help reduce the sound that transfers through a roofing assembly.”

According to Kayello, cover boards with a gypsum core work well because the cores help absorb and reduce noise. They can be installed in single or multiple layers depending on how much acoustic performance the project requires.

What may seem like a sleepy, quiet community today could develop into a place that encounters unexpected changes that create only more noise and barriers to learning.

One example of this is the Des Moines Elementary School in Des Moines, Washington. Located just a few miles south of Seattle, the original one-room school building was constructed in 1925 to provide education for the local community. At the time, the Puget Sound area was a hub of commerce, fishing, and timber, but starting in the early 1930s a new industry began to arise—aviation.

Home to the Boeing Company, the entire Seattle region soon became a flashpoint for designing, manufacturing, and testing planes and jets. The impact on Des Moines was significant, specifically when the original Boeing Field was built just a few miles from the coastal community. Boeing Field later became Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, or Sea-Tac, and today almost 1,200 aircraft depart or land there every day.

While once quaint and quiet, the Des Moines Elementary School found that it was located directly in the flight path of Sea-Tac. For the students and staff, the noise grew to become an ever-present aggravation.

In 2018, groundbreaking began on the site of the original schoolhouse to build a bigger, modern, and improved school for the children of Des Moines. Controlling noise was one of the top priorities for architects Hutteball + Oremus Architecture, who were tasked with the design of the new school.

To address the exterior noise issue, all the products specified for the building envelope, from sheathing to glazing to roof board, had to meet certain Sound Transmission Class (STC) ratings to comply with health department administrative code and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) requirements.

Roofing systems are generally assessed for thermal insulation, waterproofing, and structural integrity, and have lower STC ratings at around 30-40 due to the lightweight and structural nature of roofing materials. For the Des Moines Elementary project, an STC rating of 49 was required, along with all the other requirements to protect the building from the heavy rainfall and frequent storms in the region.

To accomplish this, Hutteball + Oremus specified three layers of half-inch roof decking material selected for its sound control properties. The gypsum-core cover board had the unique feature of a fiberglass mat-faced covering instead of traditional paper, providing additional protection to both the board and the building.

To protect the new building interior, the district chose to install a temporary roof on the building during the construction process, with the first layer of cover board used as a base for a self-adhered waterproof underlayment. Its benefit was that it allowed the contractor to use the first layer of cover board for the permanent roof rather than having to install an additional cover board for the temporary roof. Skipping this step not only decreased material use, but also allowed the contractor to dry-in the temporary roof more quickly.

A similar gypsum core with fiberglass mat that also served as a water-resistive and air barrier was used on the exterior of the building, with an additional layer added for noise abatement. The extra layer provided mass to the wall, reducing the ability for sound vibrations to transfer to the interior, and allowing for a faster construction process and simpler installation for contractors.