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Nature & Environment
Learning Centre
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Nature & Environment Learning Centre Amsterdam
All primary schools in Amsterdam have a special education program about nature and environment. In this program every child takes care of his or her own 6 m2 garden and gets additional classes in a dedicated building: the nature & environment learning centre. The new learning centre in Amsterdam North replaces two temporary structures that housed this program over the past 5 years. The new building is unique, because it works as an education tool itself: its sustainability can be seen and be felt.
The new Nature and Environment Learning Centre (NME) is energy neutral. This in itself is uninteresting. The non-consumption of fossil fuels is a self-evident property of any new building. Or it should be. What makes the energy management of the new school building interesting is that sustainability is visible, tangible and perceptible. The particular shape of the building allows, for example, an optimal orientation of the roof towards the sun. Another example are the large concrete slabs in front the building. They heat up fresh air before it enters the classrooms. The nature center is located on a rectangular plot in the middle of the school gardens of Amsterdam Noord. The location was just right: near the entrance of the site and optimally oriented to the gardens. Only the long facade was just not exactly facing south, which would have been perfect for using solar energy. By positioning the ridge of the roof exactly east-west the roof plane faced south and provided the building with its distinctive shape. Another advantage is that the roof almost touches the ground, so that even smaller children can easily see the solar panels. The entrance to the nature center is in the middle of the long south-east facade. The layout of the plan is almost symmetrical. On the
left and right are classrooms, on the first floor two identical rooms serve as office space and a canteen. In the middle is
nothing: through the glass entrance doors one can look straight at the school gardens on the other side of the building. The long facades consist from top to bottom of window frames of about a meter wide. Operable window parts are cladded with white lacquered wooden panels, so that the pattern of long vertical window frames is not interrupted. On the south side eight dark concrete slabs are mounted to the wall. In front of the slabs is a large glass pane and at the top is one can see a long narrow wooden hung window (?). These are the so-called Trombe-walls, after the French engineer Félix Trombe (1906 - 1985), who reinvented a simple and intelligent passive solar system in the ‘60s. The dark concrete slab warms up by sunlight and accumulates - by its mass - the heat. In the cavety between the glass pane and the hot concrete slab ventilation air is guided by means of natural draft. The hung window leads the fresh, pre-heated ventilation air into the classroom. In the warm months of the year, the hung window may close and other parts of the façade can be opened.
The Trombe-wall has never secured a foothold in the design of sustainable buildings, a handful of self-construction projects of some fanatical ecological builders after. That is unfortunate. The Nature and Environment Learning Centre shows that Trombe-walls not only work very well, but that they can also create an architecturally interesting setting.
In order to increase the surface area of the concrete walls a pattern of recessed half-shells is fitted. The pattern can be
read, with some effort, as an anthology of Dutch nature poetry.
The roof and end walls are cladded with wooden slats. The covering does not function as the waterproofing, but is intended to extract the bitumen roofing from view. Also, the solar panels can be included in the roof, instead of
placing them on top of it (which is usually ugly). In most buildings with wood cladding, even if it is not the water
proofing, the pattern runs either horizontally or vertically. Because the wood is a purely decorative element many more possibilities are imaginable. wood flooring, for example, exists in a rich variety of laying patterns, with equally
exotic names: herringbone or block pattern, Hungarian Point of Versailles. In the Nature and Environment Learning Centre the wood cladding consists of a block pattern of three boards, whose dimensions are matched to the solar panels. The end walls count 21 designer birdhouses: 20 for swifts and one for a bat.
Trombe-wall
dark concrete for excellent heat accumulation glass panelcold fresh air
warm fresh air
OUTSIDE INSIDE
To increase the area facing the sun, hemispheres have been cut out of the concrete.
plans
1 2 6 10 3plattegrond begane grond plattegrond verdieping plattegrond dak 7 4 5 1 lokaal 2 lokaal 3 hal 4 toilet 5 toilet 6 kantine 7 overloop 8 toilet 9 technische ruimte 10 kantoor 11 zonnepanelen 12 houtpatroon 8 9 11 12 0 1 2 5 10 meter
