Article Number: 6684
The green schoolhouse series, Armstrong helps build LEED Platinum-designed schoolhouses
Bringing together an entire community, including school districts, corporations and volunteers, The Green Schoolhouses will replace uninspired, outdated auxiliary classroom buildings with sustainable, efficient buildings beginning this fall with two K-12 schools in Phoenix.
The inaugural Green Schoolhouses are designed to be the first LEED-Platinum schoolhouses in the world built entirely by volunteers. The schoolhouses are 6,000- to 15,000-square-foot, stand-alone, multi-purpose classroom facilities that will be used for traditional educational instruction during the day, after-school programs and community meeting spaces on evenings and weekends.
“The Green Schoolhouses will be built using donated, top-of-the-line, green, sustainable products and state-of-the-art technologies,” said Marshall Zotara, founder and senior managing partner of Cause and Effect Evolutions, the marketing arm of GSHS. “Not only will the students benefit from learning in a healthier classroom setting, the schoolhouses will also serve as integral, hands-on teaching tools.”
According to the U.S. Green Building Council, 20% of America goes to school every day. Too many of these students and teachers attend schools that are inefficient and miss important opportunities to reduce operational costs, foster learning and protect student health.
“Numerous studies have demonstrated direct benefits from a greener environment to student health and performance,” Zotara said. “For example, research shows daylight picks up performance; good indoor air quality improves health; acoustics increase learning potential; and comfortable indoor temperatures enhance occupant satisfaction.”
Julia Pierce, Armstrong’s director of commercial flooring marketing and design, said by promoting the greening of all schools, “we can make an impact on student test scores, teacher retention, school operational costs and the environment.”
Each school will be uniquely designed by separate architectural teams.
Armstrong is the exclusive hard surface flooring sponsor for the first Green Schoolhouse. “Armstrong’s wide variety of flooring materials allows us to design productive environments for students and teachers,” Zotara said. “Floor patterns can be created using colors appropriate to every age group and application — from cool, eye-relaxing grays to stimulating bold, bright colors.”
Armstrong’s selection of colors, patterns and sustainable attributes can be well matched to any educational facility, including vinyl sheet flooring, linoleum and VCT it offers through pattern construction. This prevents the creation of traffic lanes. VCT is particularly popular in educational settings because it’s relatively low maintenance, inexpensive and withstands the pounding that most school floors take every day. All Armstrong resilient floors are FloorScore certified for low VOC emissions.
Armstrong’s exclusive Migrations BioBased Tile (BBT) offers the rare, dual qualities of green attributes and excellent performance. It’s made with BioStride, a polymer which contains rapidly renewable ingredients, and contains 10% recycled content. Migrations tile is FloorScore certified and contributes to LEED credits EQ4.3, MR4, MR6 and, depending on project location, MR5.
Armstrong’s BBT is not only sustainable and well priced, but also is an incredibly durable flooring product, perfect for high-traffic areas like schools. “In tests comparing it to standard composition tile, Migrations demonstrates five times more impact resistance and two-and-a-half times more resistance to cracking over uneven subfloors,” Pierce said.
Construction will get under way on the inaugural Green Schoolhouse at Road-runner Elementary School in the fall, followed by the build of the second Green Schoolhouse at Orangewood School in later fall.
The inaugural Green Schoolhouses are designed to be the first LEED-Platinum schoolhouses in the world built entirely by volunteers. The schoolhouses are 6,000- to 15,000-square-foot, stand-alone, multi-purpose classroom facilities that will be used for traditional educational instruction during the day, after-school programs and community meeting spaces on evenings and weekends.
“The Green Schoolhouses will be built using donated, top-of-the-line, green, sustainable products and state-of-the-art technologies,” said Marshall Zotara, founder and senior managing partner of Cause and Effect Evolutions, the marketing arm of GSHS. “Not only will the students benefit from learning in a healthier classroom setting, the schoolhouses will also serve as integral, hands-on teaching tools.”
According to the U.S. Green Building Council, 20% of America goes to school every day. Too many of these students and teachers attend schools that are inefficient and miss important opportunities to reduce operational costs, foster learning and protect student health.
“Numerous studies have demonstrated direct benefits from a greener environment to student health and performance,” Zotara said. “For example, research shows daylight picks up performance; good indoor air quality improves health; acoustics increase learning potential; and comfortable indoor temperatures enhance occupant satisfaction.”
Julia Pierce, Armstrong’s director of commercial flooring marketing and design, said by promoting the greening of all schools, “we can make an impact on student test scores, teacher retention, school operational costs and the environment.”
Each school will be uniquely designed by separate architectural teams.
Armstrong is the exclusive hard surface flooring sponsor for the first Green Schoolhouse. “Armstrong’s wide variety of flooring materials allows us to design productive environments for students and teachers,” Zotara said. “Floor patterns can be created using colors appropriate to every age group and application — from cool, eye-relaxing grays to stimulating bold, bright colors.”
Armstrong’s selection of colors, patterns and sustainable attributes can be well matched to any educational facility, including vinyl sheet flooring, linoleum and VCT it offers through pattern construction. This prevents the creation of traffic lanes. VCT is particularly popular in educational settings because it’s relatively low maintenance, inexpensive and withstands the pounding that most school floors take every day. All Armstrong resilient floors are FloorScore certified for low VOC emissions.
Armstrong’s exclusive Migrations BioBased Tile (BBT) offers the rare, dual qualities of green attributes and excellent performance. It’s made with BioStride, a polymer which contains rapidly renewable ingredients, and contains 10% recycled content. Migrations tile is FloorScore certified and contributes to LEED credits EQ4.3, MR4, MR6 and, depending on project location, MR5.
Armstrong’s BBT is not only sustainable and well priced, but also is an incredibly durable flooring product, perfect for high-traffic areas like schools. “In tests comparing it to standard composition tile, Migrations demonstrates five times more impact resistance and two-and-a-half times more resistance to cracking over uneven subfloors,” Pierce said.
Construction will get under way on the inaugural Green Schoolhouse at Road-runner Elementary School in the fall, followed by the build of the second Green Schoolhouse at Orangewood School in later fall.
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