Sustainability Report
Embedded Carbon
The project's estimated lifetime carbon footprint is 6.8 kg CO2e/m²/year over a 50-year lifespan (Danish standard), well below the current Danish standard of 12 kg CO2e/m²/year for larger school projects. Continued use and care could further reduce this to -3 kg CO2e/m²/year.
Passive strategies, including optimal orientation and natural ventilation via operable skylights, minimize reliance on mechanical systems. Thermal mass from clay plaster, dense straw panels, and wood fiber insulation, combined with strategic window placement and a south-facing overhang, ensure a stable indoor climate. Roof-mounted photovoltaic panels significantly contribute to the building's energy needs, and a heat pump recovers exhaust air from toilets and the chemistry classroom to heat the building and supply utility water.
Operational Emissions / Energy
The design team for Henning Larsen’s 250 m² extension of Feldballe School created a forward-thinking design framework that respects planetary boundaries and addresses the entire life cycle of a project, ‘cradle-to-cradle’. Here are the key points of the Feldballe School extension's sustainable design framework and outcomes:
- Forward-Thinking Design Framework: Based on respecting planetary boundaries and a 'cradle-to-cradle' lifecycle approach.
- Five Key Principles: Renewable, Bio-based Materials: Utilizing materials that sequester carbon.
- Locally Sourced Materials: Employing resources like Zostera seagrass.
- Avoiding Toxic Chemicals: Ensuring material safety.
- Healthy Indoor Environment: Reducing operational energy via passive strategies.
- Design for Disassembly: Facilitating easy maintenance.
- Bio-based Material Focus: Built almost entirely with wood, clay plaster, Zostera seagrass, and straw.
- Material Benefits: These materials sequester CO₂, are non-toxic, fire-safe, and provide efficient insulation and an improved indoor climate.
- Exceeding Targets: Achieved a low carbon footprint of 6kg CO₂e per m² per year over a 50-year lifespan, surpassing Danish standards.
Service and maintenance emissions
The entire design focuses on straightforward disassembly and reuse, emphasizing principles of circularity and waste management. It offers flexibility and simplifies repair processes, enabling future reinstallation or recycling of its components. For instance, the modular panel system made of compressed straw within wooden cassettes allows for easy replacement when repairs are necessary.
Afterlife
Feldballe School's "cradle-to-cradle" design prioritizes reusable and repurposable materials and systems. Modular straw cassettes, for instance, are constructed from biodegradable materials without toxic adhesives, enabling easy replacement, refurbishment, and waste-free disassembly.
This describes a building or object designed with the environment in mind:
Key features:
- Easy Disassembly and Reuse: It can be taken apart and its parts used again.
- Circularity and Waste Management: It's designed to minimize waste and keep materials in use for as long as possible, supporting a "circular economy."
- Flexibility: The design allows for changes and adaptations.
- Ease of Repair: It's simple to fix if something breaks.
- Reinstall or Recycle: Parts can be put back together in a new structure or broken down and recycled.
- Example: Modular Panel System: The walls (made of compressed straw in wooden frames) are built in sections (modules) that can be easily swapped out for repair.
Key products in low carbon design
