Sustainable Polish facility wows iESE visitors

Representatives from iESE recently toured a new state school and community facility in Poland designed to be sustainable and provide healthy indoor air for users.

The Mareckie Centrum Edukacyjno-Rekreacyjne (MCER) in Marki near Warsaw was funded by Mareckie Inwestycje Miejskie, a company founded and owned by the Municipality of the City of Marki. As well as housing a primary school for 1,200 pupils, the MCER also contains a swimming pool, concert hall, sports hall, sports fields and courts.

The building has been designed as zero-energy meaning it produces and uses its own energy through renewable energy sources such as heat pumps, photovoltaic panels, advanced heat recovery systems and through equipment which produces electricity from gas. It has also been equipped with water saving devices, including rainwater storage, which is then reused to water green areas. The building also features a swamp roof system.

The MCER has also been designed to ensure indoor air quality is high. Large recuperators filter air inside the building to purify it from pollution and also recover heat from the polluted air to heat incoming fresh air. Each teaching room also features temperature control and CO2 concentration sensors.

Dr Andrew Larner, Chief Executive at iESE who took part in the MCER visit, said he was very impressed with the whole project.

What fascinated me was they started by asking what environment children learn best in and then designed out from there. Healthy air, good external light, good quality facilities and good design go together. The breadth of facilities is amazing, and they have taken the level of air cleanliness to another level. The next step is installing the ironising technology in the recuperator which removes smell and neutralises odour, but also neutralises bacteria and viruses as well.

Dr Larner said the issue of air quality was starting to receive attention in Europe, including through the establishment of a not-for-profit organisation in Belgium called the Indoor Air Quality Society.

There is now a lot of practical but scientific evidencebased work going on across the whole of Europe to systematically improve classroom air quality standards. We ought to be looking at what has been achieved at the MCER and bringing it to our schools. While retrofitting can be expensive, we should at least be incorporating these strategies into new school design.

• Read more about air quality on page 3 of Transform Magazine here: https://issuu.com/ksagency.co.uk/docs/iese_transform_031_green-environment_online_issue