A new K-12 school in Washington, D.C., is the first school in the world to achieve both LEED for Schools Platinum and WELL Platinum, according to its architect, Perkins Eastman.
The John Lewis Elementary School is also the first school in the District of Columbia designed to achieve net-zero energy (NZE). The facility was designed to improve student and teacher performance, health, and well-being, as well as reduce the building’s life-cycle costs. (See more K-12 schools coverage from BD+C.)
The new building replaced an obsolete, brutalist open-plan building. The design retained the best aspects of the open plan, providing flexible space and ease of communication, while improving adjacencies, daylighting, acoustics, security, and outdoor space.
The design emphasizes outdoor recreation and connections with the natural world, known to improve student health and academic achievement. The landscape design embeds natural systems with dynamic play and learning spaces to blur the walls of the classroom. A treasured place for the community, certain school amenities are accessible after-hours and on weekends.
The building offers a series of intimate, child-scaled houses inside and outside that foster collaboration and strong relationships. Designers benchmarked performance against several of the highest performing schools in the country on energy and Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) factors to provide the best daylight, most comfortable, and healthiest learning environments of any school building.
![World's first K-12 school to achieve both LEED for Schools Platinum and WELL Platinum](/sites/default/files/inline-images/john-lewis-elementary-school-14.jpeg)
A high-performance dashboard tracks the building’s energy consumption, showcases the building’s sustainability features, and links to the school’s curriculum to address topics such as social and environmental justice, climate change, and water conservation. Through this interactive, online dashboard, students and teachers can discover how they interact with the building, and how the building and campus influence and are influenced by the larger environment.
The building is paired with Benjamin Banneker Academic High School, concurrently designed, which is also targeting NZE. The excess energy expected to be generated at John Lewis will help Banneker also achieve NZE.
Owner and/or developer: DC Department of General Services | DCPS
Architect: Perkins Eastman DC
MEP engineer: CMTA
Structural engineer: Yun Associates
General contractor/construction manager: MCN Build
Related Stories
K-12 Schools | Dec 12, 2016
Building a nation of super schools
AEC teams are being asked to design and build schools with enough flexibility to adapt to changing pedagogies.
School Construction | Oct 23, 2016
As construction rebounds, education sector spending flattens
Post-recession slump suggests a settling in at a “normal” level similar to the mid aughts.
Great Solutions | Aug 23, 2016
Novel construction approach speeds K-12 school projects
The Folia system uses pre-engineered components to deliver school buildings at 20% less cost.
Great Solutions | Aug 23, 2016
11 great solutions for the commercial construction market
A roll-up emergency department, next-gen telemedicine center, and biophilic cooling pods are among the AEC industry’s clever ideas and novel innovations for 2016.
K-12 Schools | Aug 4, 2016
First Look: New Sandy Hook Elementary School blends safety and nature
The new Sandy Hook Elementary School has been carefully designed with state-of-the-art safety measures to keep students safe.
| Aug 1, 2016
K-12 SCHOOL GIANTS: In a new era of K-12 education, flexibility is crucial to design
Space flexibility is critical to classroom design. Spaces have to be adaptable, even allowing for drastic changes such as a doubling of classroom size.
| Aug 1, 2016
Top 80 K-12 School Construction Firms
Gilbane, Balfour Beatty, and Core Construction head Building Design+Construction’s annual ranking of the nation’s largest K-12 school sector construction and construction management firms, as reported in the 2016 Giants 300 Report.
| Aug 1, 2016
Top 60 K-12 School Engineering Firms
AECOM, Jacobs, and STV top Building Design+Construction’s annual ranking of the nation’s largest K-12 school sector engineering and E/A firms, as reported in the 2016 Giants 300 Report.
| Aug 1, 2016
Top 100 K-12 School Architecture Firms
DLR Group, Stantec, and Huckabee top Building Design+Construction’s annual ranking of the nation’s largest K-12 school sector architecture and A/E firms, as reported in the 2016 Giants 300 Report.
K-12 Schools | Jun 2, 2016
Chicago charter school designed by Studio Gang emphasizes sustainability and wellness
The Academy for Global Citizenship’s new purpose-built structure, located in the Garfield Ridge neighborhood of Chicago, is meant to reflect its operating philosophy that the path to a more sustainable future begins in the classroom.