Engineers:

Tyler Colenbrander
Alexa Funahashi

Model for a Sustainable Classroom

Background (Why/What)

In many third world countries and impoverished areas, education is not

something that can be taken for granted. We aim to increase access to education,
which we think is possible by making the educational infrastructure, such as
classrooms, cheaper. By building a classroom for students to have an environment to
learn in, we can try to help children get an education.
Our project objective is to address the issue of climate change by aiming to
create a sustainable classroom. Producing buildings usually uses materials that were
extracted from the environment in a harmful or wasteful way. We aim to build our
classroom using as many sustainable, recycled, materials that we can in order to
minimize our global footprint. The building itself should also be sustainable after
construction so there will have to be little maintenance. The cost to maintain it should be
fairly cheap, as well, which will be made possible by solar panels offsetting energy
costs. We would also like to build something modular so we can create multiple of them
at a low cost and a with a low environmental impact in order to reach a larger population
of people.

Objectives

1. Research existing sustainable buildings and how they are made

2. Develop a building that will not require much maintenance
3. Identify locations where the classroom would ideally be placed
4. Research local materials that can be used to build the classroom in the location it
will be placed
a. Prepare cost estimates
b. Compare advantages and disadvantages of different materials
5. Specify requirements for a sustainable classroom
6. Design our classroom with materials and items included in our requirements list
7. Create a model of our design

Broader Scope (Problems you are trying to solve)

Ultimately, we want to test the limits of sustainable building to create ideas for the
future. In the status quo, climate change ravages impoverished areas, who do not have
the educational institutions or financial capabilities to sufficiently develop their
communities. We aim to incorporate tenets of sustainability into economical building
design, focusing mainly on materials used in building and energy use (solar energy) to
reduce the cost and global footprint of buildings. Also, since we are designing it
specifically to be a classroom, we are focusing on education around the world,
especially in historically disadvantaged areas. In the United States, many take primary
and secondary education for granted, and it is a great building block for upwards social
mobility. Yet, the opportunity to pursue an education is not necessarily taken for granted
across the entire world, and we aim to provide prototype solutions to increasing
accessibility to learning.

Timeframe

Project Start Date: 11/25/18

Project Proposal: 12/14/18
Complete research and come up with potential building concepts: 2/8/19
Evaluate concepts and select one - 2/20/19
Complete sketches and start CAD designs of final design - 3/22/19
Manufacture model and do tests - 4/26/19
Design Report - 5/14/19
Final Due Date - 5/21/19

Project Budget (Estimate)

Most of our budget will go towards researching materials to see which ones will work
the best in our design. Getting the materials to create small scale prototypes will be the
only cost in our project because we will be 3D modeling our design on the computer,
which will be free with a student account. Because our building is too large to built in the
amount of time that we have, we will not be building a full scale product, so the
prototype materials costs will be low and probably be covered just by materials in the
Makerspace at school.

Development process (How)

We will begin by continuing research on our project, online and in the textbook. We
need to start flushing out specifics of our project, so we will break down parts of it and
do specific research into areas like the materials and solar panels. We will research in
our engineering textbook, online, and by asking our mentors for help. This will help us
create a list of everything that we want included in our design, so we can anticipate
design constraints and criteria. We will also be able to choose materials based on which
will be the most durable and ideal for our design. We have already started doing this
and created a new section below called Classroom Requirements (see below). Then we
will begin developing different concepts that will provide several options for us to
pursue. Once we have some flushed out ideas, we will use a decision matrix to pick the
ideal solution and continue researching that idea more. With this design, we will do
detailed CAD depictions and paper sketches for use in our presentation, and we will
write up a final report once finished.

Classroom Requirements

● Size to accommodate around 30 students per room

● Zero net energy use
● Outlets and lighting (LED lights and daylighting)
● Group desk setup with movable desks to provide options for teachers to teach
lecture style or do project based learning
● Low maintenance tasks and cost, able to be done by teacher / other personnel
not-specialized in construction
● Writing surfaces (painted chalkboard or whiteboard) on walls
● Supplies storage
● Teacher desk

Current Solutions (Market Research):

Earthship Biotecture: This company builds sustainable buildings using recycled

materials. They make their buildings fully sustainable by having a waste system, rain
collector, garden, solar system, and greenhouse styled structure for heating. This
means that each Earthship is completely off-grid and requires no outside resources
because all food is grown there as well. The company that makes the earthships
charges around $300 per hour of construction time on average, and they are usually
found in remote areas like deserts. This is probably a good model/idea for use to work
off of, but we definitely want to simplify the design to make it easily modular and
cheaper. We also will have less amenities in our classrooms, as they are not fully
functional living spaces, which will also significantly decrease the cost.
Intermodal Structures: This company uses shipping containers to build mobile, cost-
effective buildings, like the classroom shown below. Some advantages to this is that it
can be very cost effective due to the scalability of these structures, and it can be easy to
assemble quickly. However, they have to be careful, because they cannot use damaged
shipping containers without running the risk of undermining structural integrity. Because
shipping containers in good condition may be hard to find at a low cost, especially in
lower income areas, we probably will not use shipping containers for our project.

Members and Roles

Alexa Funahashi - Media designer, sketch artist, researcher

Tyler Colenbrander - CAD designer, recorder, researcher

Mentors

Robert Goralka (rgoralka@marincounty.org) - Civil Engineer for Marin County

Pieter Colenbrander (pcolenbrander@ommconsulting.com) - Electrical Engineer for
O’Mahony and Myer

Scientific/ Engineering Concepts

See Need to Know Research

Monitoring and Evaluation

Our final design will be evaluated at the end of the second semester, May/June 2019.
Our official evaluators will be Mr. Tronconi of the San Marin STEM program and the
mentors for our project, Pieter Colenbrander and Robert Goralka.