"school"

The David Eccles School of Business on the University of Utah campus features a 28- x 18-ft 2 hour interior glass wall with a 90 minute full-vision door in an exit enclosure/stairwell. The architects selected fire rated glass to meet fire rating requirements while providing maximum visibility and natural daylighting in the space. The project’s specifications also required the fire rated glass to have the same optical clarity as the adjacent non-rated glass systems.

The Joint School of Nanoscience & Nanoengineering within the Gateway University Research Park in Greensboro, North Carolina is a new 105,000 sf interdisciplinary research facility dedicated to academic and industrial research. To create an open, transparent lab design, SAFTI FIRST® provided SuperLite® II-XL 60 in GPX® Architectural Series Frames for the 60 minute walls.

AJC Architects of Salt Lake City, Utah looked to SAFTI FIRST® when it came time to renovate the media center and build a new counseling center for North Layton Junior High School. They realized they could take advantage of a clear fire-rated glazing to keep the look of the media center and provide an open, welcoming entrance to the new counseling center.

The University of Wisconsin School of Business Grainger Hall’s east and west wings are now linked by a state-of-the-art Learning Commons that encourages collaboration through technology and design. To achieve maximum transparency while meeting code requirements, the architects specified 9 ft. tall, clear, fire resistive butt-glazed walls using SuperLite® II-XLM in GPX® Architectural Series perimeter framing.

Prairie Hills Junior High School's south-facing elevation features a glazed aluminum curtain wall that incorporates PPG Solarblue and PPG Solarban 60 glazing. Parts of the curtain wall had to meet a two-hour rating because it was adjacent to a two-hour block wall through the building's interior. SAFTI FIRST® supplied SuperLite® II-XL 120 IGU in GPX® Curtain Wall Framing in order to meet ASTM E-119/NFPA 251/UL263 requirements.

The new Robert B. Aikens Commons at the University of Michigan Law School was built on an unused grassy courtyard between Hutchins Hall and the legal research building. The proximity of the new common area to historic Hutchins Hall posed a unique challenge. The building code required a 2 hour fire rated barrier between them. The architects specified SuperLite® II-XL 120, a clear, fire resistive glazing product that meets the ASTM E-119 wall standard for up to 2 hours.

For a recent renovation of a stairwell and exit corridors at Ridgewood High School in Illinois, the design team specified SuperLite® II-XL 60 in GPX® Architectural Series Framing for its optical clarity, storefront-like appearance, and high STC ratings. In order to meet the code requirements and maximize the daylight penetrating into the building, the architects decided to use fire rated glass in the one-hour exit corridor. Because the glazing exceeds 25% of the wall area, fire resistive glass and framing assemblies rated equal to the wall had to be used.

Adaptive reuse, or the process of taking an old building or structure and repurposing it for something other than what it was originally designed for, has gained a lot traction with developers and architects alike – and for many good reasons. For one thing, it is more economical and sustainable to work with an existing structure than to demolish an old building, clean up the site, and rebuild with entirely new materials. It also helps preserve historical structures that add character to the community, as well as reduce urban sprawl. For the multifamily sector, we’ve seen adaptive reuse applied to old schools, government buildings, warehouses, etc. because these structures are usually centrally located in many downtown areas.

Buildings consume one-third of all energy and two-thirds of all electricity generated. Cool metal roofs can help reduce energy consumption by lowering cooling loads with their wide array of finishes, designs and colors.Cool metal roofs are energy-efficient. • The roof can have the greatest impact on the energy use of a building. On a typical summer afternoon, a light-colored, more reflective roof that reflects 80 percent of sunlight will stay about 310C (550F) cooler than a darker roof that reflects only 20 percent of sunlight, as reported by the Heat Island Group of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. • Cool metal roofs are an excellent option for commercial retrofit applications because they can be efficiently installed with above-sheathing ventilation, allowing heat to dissipate through the ridge vent in hot weather while acting as an insulating layer when it is cold. Metal roofs can result in as much as a 30 percent reduction in heat gain through the vented roof. • Metal roofs provide the optimal foundation for photovoltaic installations since the roof can be expected to last longer than the PV system it supports. • Wall and roof solar heat recovery systems can be integrated with steel cladding and used to provide air, water or process heating needs. • Cool metal roofing is available unpainted, with thermosetting coil-applied paint finishes, or with granular-coated surfaces. This family of roofing can achieve solar reflectance of over 70 percent, meeting the EPA Energy Star Roof Products Program performance criteria. • Emittance as high as 90 percent can be achieved for painted and granular-coated metal roofing. • Painted metal roofs retain 95 percent of their initial reflectance and emittance over time. They resist the growth of organic matter and shed dirt more readily than other materials. • Cool metal roofing can help to mitigate the Urban Heat Island Effect because of its high reflectance, which can reduce ambient air temperatures. Cool metal roofs are cost-effective. • Metal roofing has low life-cycle costs, making it the choice of many school, government, commercial, industrial and institutional building owners. • Due to its light weight per unit area, structural savings can be realized in a building when compared with heavier non-metal roofing alternatives. • For re-roofing projects, metal roofing can often be applied over the original roof, saving removal and disposal costs. • Metal roofing is fully recyclable when ultimately removed as part of building renovation or demolition, allowing it to credibly claim both recycled content and 100 percent recyclability by recognized definitions. The product’s recyclability also provides significant savings on construction removal and disposal costs.