Calvert County Public Schools commissioned SEI Design Group
to design the rehabilitation of their new high school.
Drawing on their vast experience designing schools and public spaces,
SEI knew from the outset that the classroom spaces should be built around a light well.
With facilities, like Calvert High School that is over 220,000 square feet,
inevitably we have to use technique to try and get natural light into the center parts
of the building.
Not only does it make it a more pleasant, inviting environment,
but recent studies have suggested that natural sunlighting in classrooms actually helps learning.
The result is a magnificent, multi-use space that resides under a massive skylight.
The space below will serve as the school’s new library.
What we tried to do here was cover it over and close it with a structural aluminum skylight
system.
What would be an exterior space, becomes interior and becomes a very usable, very multi-functional
large area.
Once we had the skylight in place and working, then we had to decide how to control the light.
So how would the light be controlled to provide a proper environment for learning?
Lutron and Avitecture worked togther to find the ideal solution:
Lutron meet-in-the-middle skylight shades and roller shades.
Bill Coutz from Avitecture was the shading and lighting sub-contractor charged with finding
the solution.
We took this from a design aspect and Avitecture worked directly with Lutron's engineering
to design this system to work specifically for a challenging application in this particular
space.
It is such a large expanse of open fiber-glassed area that there was heat gain, light gain
in.
The shade system incorporates individual frames holding two roller shades that meet in the
middle.
The shades close in concert to cover the entire length of the opening.
This mechanism is repeated in 56 window bays, with two skylight shades per bay
to cover the entire skylight structure.
In all, 112 skylight shades spanning 17,000 square feet.
Additionally, the vertical windows on the western exposure are also integrated into
the system.
Groups are pre-programmed to allow the opening and closing
of the skylight shades and/or the vertical shades,
at the touch of the button.
A system that actually provides what it needs to be from a functional standpoint,
but provides it in a way that is complementary to the overall design of the area.
The integration of this system itself is what really is key
to the Lutron system being the most effective that it can be.
Darkening allows faculty to program the floor space as a media center,
but perhaps the biggest benefit to Lutron’s solution is energy efficiency.
Obviously, allowing so much light into the building creates a massive heat gain.
But thermal imaging easily demonstrates the impact of closing the shades.
Estimates are the shades will reduce heat gain by upwards of 10 to 30 percent.
That’s a massive savings on air conditioning over the summer.
And by opening the shades in the winter, the heat gain will reduce the heating load.
Lutron is very unique in the fact that the support that they lend from their skills
and from their engineering department helps us design systems,
which obtain the objectives that we're looking for
or our architect is looking for or the end user is looking for.
It's a simple system, it's a beautiful system, and Lutron is terrific to work with in order
to get that to seamlessly integrate with your building.
And to see the system work on a day-to-day basis
and provide the objectives that were originally designed by the architects -
total satisfaction.