Awards for Colaiste Choilm,
in Tullamore:
Sustainable Energy Authority Ireland Award 2012: Energy Sustainability Award Winner
Green Awards 2012:
Overall Winner
Green Awards 2012:
Green Building Award Winner
CIBSE Building Performance Awards UK, 2013: Shortlisted
This is a new build 5,500m2m 575 pupil, secondary school building. The brief from the Department of Education and Skills (DoES) for the project was to provide a new education facility, and to create an exemplar secondary school that offered an improved standard of internal environment relative to current best practice standards, while also achieving an improved energy, water and carbon performance.
The school’s monitoring system will gather over one million points of data per year, which will be used by the DoES and the design team to increase understanding of energy use in modern schools, study passive building techniques, and optimise active and renewable technologies.
The scheme is the first A2 rated and most airtight school in Ireland. It has:
• a total annual energy use of only 57kWh / m² / yr while offering notably improved air quality
• a carbon impact reduction of approximately 80% relative to current standards
• an average U-Value 50% below current building standards
• a water consumption 65% lower than a typical school, with 90% of flushed water recovered from rainwater
The design was developed to maximize passive sustainable features in collaboration with the DoES and Building Design Partnership (BDP Engineers). The narrow plan, orientation, disposition of uses, natural ventilation throughout, high levels of daylight, use of thermal mass and low air permeability contributed to the sustainable design. Rainwater is harvested and energy systems, are monitored through the building management system.