#high-performance design

The average school in the United States spends more money per year on energy than on school supplies.

This shocking statistic is just one of the indicators that there is a lot of room for improvement in the structures children are learning in around the nation. A greener school featuring high-performance design creates a more facilitative learning environment for students while providing bottom-line savings for the institution, a rare win-win proposition that has enormous implications for schools around the world.

By the Numbers: Studies have shown that students learn better and are healthier in such high-performance atmospheres, and green design can save schools an estimated $100,000 a year in operating expenses.  When aggregated, successfully retrofitting all schools in the nation (including universities) would save approximately $20 billion over the next 10 years.  Considering the entire 2010 budget for the U.S. Department of Education was $56 billion, this amount of savings can have a huge impact.  In that 25% of the population of the United States is currently enrolled in school, this small step can reach a large number of people in a very meaningful way.

What it Means: In addition to the learning, health, and monetary benefits of high-performance green schools, the school itself becomes a teaching tool, wherein students learn how to lead a sustainable lifestyle.  This very global idea has an extremely local impact, in that a community revolves around its school, and changes within a school's walls permeate those within the community it supports.  This phenomenon occurs both now and into the future as the leaders of tomorrow become equipped with the tools to change the environment they live in.  What it means to be a school is an evolving proposition, and outfitting these institutions with green design is another step toward making schools community centers that have positive impacts both today and tomorrow.

Project Frog, a San Francisco-based start-up, is setting out to revolutionize the construction industry.  The firm takes a modular approach to building, and uses new, technology-based systems to provide materials that can be assembled on-site.  The result is high-performance, facilitative design that uses time, money, and energy more efficiently relative to traditional construction methods.  CEO Ann Hand describes the process as "like a high-quality Ikea building in a kit, but it's hurricane strength."

Project Frog recently received a large capital infusion from GE's Ecomagination Fund, and has completed a handful of projects throughout the country with many more on the way.  The completed projects are projected to contribute 82% less air pollution, 73% less water pollution, and use 87% less fossil fuel than the average building when aggregated over a 50-year life cycle (pictured below).

The firm specializes in the education, healthcare, and retail spaces, and produces environments that are designed to fit into their surroundings while providing facilitative conditions to their occupants.  Most importantly, however, the firm provides an example that it is possible to improve upon the traditional construction model, which has been largely static for the past 100 years, producing waste and inefficiency.