By Linda Poon, Photo: Joseph Romeo Photography, Bloomberg City + Green, May 2, 2022
The entrance to Washington, D.C.’s newest elementary school building leads right to an open-space library painted in blue, green and yellow, with a makerspace that hangs above like a treehouse. On the side, a massive touchscreen invites students to tap away at an interactive dashboard with real-time data detailing how the building is performing for a new climate reality.
“Students can see bar charts of how much energy their building is generating and consuming — for the kitchen, for the mechanical systems, and for the lights,” says Juan Guarin, a sustainability expert at the architecture firm Perkins Eastman. “We also try to use it to teach topics like climate change, social and environmental justice, and human health.”
Guarin is part of the team behind John Lewis Elementary School and the Benjamin Banneker Academic High School, the district’s first net-zero schools — meaning they are supposed to eventually consume only as much energy as they generate on-site annually.
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