Passive school building in Chotomów, Poland
The biggest passive public building in Masovian district , Polnad
The newly built school makes the first stage of the Educational Centre project in Chotomów. The future complex will consist of the newly built primary school, secondary school, cultural centre , and sport centre.
A school with all subsidiary functions always creates an important component of surrounding neighbourhood, it makes a landmark for local community.
Chotomów, the village lacated north of Warsaw, consisting mostly of detached houses scattered on Mazowian plains is inhabited by fast growing community.
The plot on which the new school has been built is located at a crossing of important local roads.
The crossroads always make the beginning of developing human settlements, as schools make the beginning of the education of their inhabitants.
The school was designed to match the local character and traditional urbanism where human settlements are found in the midst of agricultural and natural landscape at crossroads.
Extensive programme of the school combined with the idea of small detached village houses generates the need to divide the complex building into smaller units. That leads to creating interesting inner spaces , courtyards and gaps between units and leting natural light into buildings.
Classrooms, located in separate units, have a possibility of natural isolation all through the day.
The building combined of smaller units joined with common communication spaces provide intimate character and better identification for its users.
As for public development the definite low budget was to be kept, which resulted in simplicity of design and use of only comon materials. The simple colour code for buildings’ identification has been applied. Each part of future Educational Centre will have different colour.
"The design of the building was based on the proposal that won the architectural competition.":http://europaconcorsi.com/projects/100903-90-Architekci-Centrum-Edukacyjno-Kulturalno-Sportowego-Chotom-w
Acquisition of public funds for energy efficient buildings enabled local authorities to develop the new school as energy efficient passive building. At the moment it is the biggest public investment in Mazowian district and one of biggest in Poland, equiped with ground heat exchanger as a source of heating and cooling.
Ventilation system is based on separately operating small units provided for each classroom. The units are equipped witch carbon dioxide sensors and highly efficient energy recuperation for optimisation of energy consumption and sufficient fvresh air supply.
Only LED lighting, is applied in the building , which again reduces operation costs.
Above mentioned solutions resulted for such building in threefold reduction of carbon dioxide emission and eightfold reduction of heating costs.
