EDUCATION
THE IMPORTANCE OF HEALTHY DESIGN FOR SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES Steve Richmond, Head of Marketing and Technical at REHAU Building Solutions, discusses the importance of creating schools and universities that are ‘healthy by design’, to both fall in line with net-zero targets and uphold student performance and wellbeing.
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he intrinsic link between the quality of educational buildings and the academic performance of the students who occupy them has been increasingly recognised in recent years. As long ago as 2002, The Guardian reported on a study which found that “the quality of school buildings can help or hinder learning and teaching”, with lighting, space, furnishings and equipment all weighing in on student attitudes and behaviours.
Buildings and learning: 20 years on Given this connection, it is important to assess how attitudes to school and university design may have shifted and developed in the past 20 years, particularly given the ever-growing importance of environmental commitments. In order to successfully reach net zero by 2050, reducing carbon emissions for the built environment is now a cornerstone of the green transition, with this priority weighing in on all aspects of building design going forwards. As such, REHAU recently conducted a number of reports – the Designing Healthy series – spanning education, apartments, hotels and healthcare. Within the reports, REHAU surveyed 520 M&E designers and architects, 25% of which worked primarily with schools and universities. The headline finding here makes for compelling reading. A staggering 97% of respondents said that leaving high-quality buildings
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for future generations was a medium-to-high priority. However, in direct contrast with this, 77% believed that wellbeing is being ‘value-engineered’ out of a building’s original design, with cost-cutting measures now beginning to encroach on healthy design principles. These shifting priorities are currently being compounded by a number of burgeoning market challenges. Primarily, the UK’s higher education student population is expected to grow between 12.3% between the 2020-21 and 2024-25 academic years. Despite this, the National Audit Office estimates that around 60% of current academic building stock was built before 1976. As such, there is a clear need to construct new schools and universities that are ‘healthy by design’.
Ventilation and thermal comfort The Oslo Manifesto, a 2017 report by the Royal Institute of British Architects, is the landmark piece of research concerning the impact of building design on student and teacher wellbeing. It concluded that good design can support better learning outcomes for students, increase teachers’ productivity, and even make schools more cost effective to run. It also ascertained the main factors that bear an influence on occupant performance – namely, ventilation, natural
light, acoustics, thermal comfort and temperature control. Guidance on these factors is detailed in the Government’s Building Bulletin 101, which was updated in 2018 to recognise how extreme thermal conditions can affect learning. For new structures replacing old, existing building stock, the solution may lie in thermally-activated building structures (TABS) that offer a means of regulating indoor temperatures beyond traditional HVAC systems. This technology uses the building’s concrete thermal
mass as a buffer for changing temperature demands, running hot or cold water through slabs to heat or cool as appropriate. This ensures the removal of any cold draughts, and crucially allows temperature change to take place gradually over a 24-hour period. This is opposed to inefficiently blast heating or chilling the space, which can invite the risk of humidity, in turn promoting the growth of dangerous mould. However, options also need to be identified that can be implemented into current educational facilities. In this
