Increasing school building usage through adaptable building design: A quantitative sustainability assessment

Abstract

While school buildings have the potential to form the hearth of a local community, they currently remain unused for longer periods of time out of school hours in several regions. To exploit this large sustainability potential, school buildings must be able to allow for a flexible building usage. First, this study explores whether letting school infrastructure to external users can be economically profitable. Second, it tackles the knowledge gap on how ventilation systems can facilitate a short- and medium-long-term flexible building usage in a sustainable manner, which is essential to achieve a more extensive school building usage. To answer these research questions, a case study is carried out which includes a flexible building usage that based on the needs of educational stakeholders. The results of the profitability analyses indicate that it is possible for schools to yield substantial profits over a period of 20 years and that the financial risks are low. Next, a life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle cost assessment (LCCA) are carried out on three different ventilation strategies. It is found that a decentralized balanced mechanical ventilation system has the lowest environmental impact and life cycle cost, since this system requires few adaptions during the study period. The mechanical exhaust ventilation system has the highest environmental impact, while the centralized balanced mechanical ventilation system has the highest life cycle cost. An important insight of this sustainability assessment is that the material-related impact increases in a flexible context and that it sometimes outweighs the energy-related impact.