Niu Valley Middle School on Oahu cools new building without AC

At the World Languages Center at Niu Valley Middle School, visitors may be impressed by the remarkable sounds of local children speaking effervescently in Mandarin and Japanese, along with some learning English for the first time.

But what’s even more unusual is that one sound is conspicuously missing from the classrooms here: the low roar of air conditioning.

The new building uses no AC to keep students and teachers cool, instead relying on a unique design and purposeful positioning to create “passive ventilation.” It is the state’s first public school building specially created to harness and maximize Hawaii’s signature tradewinds. Sometimes the airflow coursing through the classrooms is strong enough to send papers flying.

The innovative design is of particular interest in a time when fresh air in classrooms has been made a priority by state health and education officials to keep students safe from COVID-19, and cost-effective and sustainable methods to keep classrooms cool are being sought in response to funding instability and climate change, plus the state’s quest to reduce fossil fuel use and achieve 100% renewable energy by 2045.

“We are using the power of nature to ventilate the classrooms,” architect Dean Sakamoto said during a recent tour of the building he designed for the East Honolulu public school. “It’s about making buildings that perform in terms of keeping energy costs down, and perform in terms of satisfying the function of the end users, which in this case are the teachers and the students, making the best possible environment for them.”

The World Languages Center is carefully positioned to face into the tradewinds rolling down the nearby valley, and its design employs a physics principle called the Venturi effect, which says air channeled through a constricted area will speed up. On the windward side of the building, the breeze accelerates through small louvered windows near the floor, while on the leeward side each classroom has a large polycarbonate “barn door” that slides the wall wide open to help pull the air through.

Above the four classrooms’ drop ceilings, a system of air channels similarly flushes hot, stagnant air out of the attic area.

Creating the center, including over an acre of site work, cost approximately $5.5 million, Sakamoto said. While state officials in the past have estimated new school construction generally to cost roughly $1 million per classroom, the price and duration for the Niu Valley project — begun with design in 2014, followed by groundbreaking in 2019 — were increased by having to build in two phases with different contractors under the state’s bidding and procurement system. With pandemic-related delays and inflation in materials as well, all those factors raised the cost about 20% overall and added about a year, Sakamoto said.

At the same time, Sakamoto said his engineering consultants have calculated that $300,000 was saved by the project’s skipping purchasing air conditioning hardware, and another nearly $12,600 savings per year will be realized by not having to pay for AC electricity and maintenance. Not having to replace worn-out hardware will save thousands of dollars more, he said.

On the one-story building’s footprint of 8,700 square feet are four classrooms, a technology room, student and staff restrooms, and expansive shaded outdoor learning spaces. The “IT room” is the only part that required air conditioning because of a temperature-sensitive server, Sakamoto said.

‘The kids love it’

The World Languages Center is unusual also for its “21st Century Schools” approach, which wove teacher input into the design, Sakamoto said.

At their suggestion, all student tables and chairs are on casters, to encourage their moving around for group collaboration by students.

“Communicating with the outdoors” also was a design priority, Sakamoto said. Each classroom has a quiet, shaded lanai in the back, where students can study overlooking an expansive view of the school field while serenaded by birdsong and the quiet rustling of shower trees. The windward side has large picture windows, and a generous roof overhang attracts students into its shade, helping to ease lunchtime overcrowding in other parts of the school.

The World Languages Center has the capacity to be even more sustainable, Sakamoto said: If the state opts to fund it further, the roof is designed to accept photovoltaic panels for solar energy as well as collect rainwater for irrigating plants.

Finishing touches include recessed doors placed to the side, to help keep out windblown rubbish as well encourage a feng shui flow of energy, Sakamoto said. His company donated painting of large kanji characters outside the doors.

“We are excited. The kids love it because it’s very contemporary,” said Niu Valley Middle School Principal Laura Ahn. Students and teachers have fondly nicknamed it “the Costco building,” “the stadium” and “the warehouse” for its industrial-style concrete floors and exposed beams.

“We all like it. It’s nice and, like, new,” said seventh grader Averie Hong, who takes Mandarin classes in the new building. She said students generally feel comfortable, and “no one usually complains about being hot. … I feel like it gets a little more breezy inside than the other buildings, and it’s cooler.”

Teacher Jessie Wu, who teaches in the new building, says she’s grateful for the big upgrade from the sweltering heat of the converted industrial arts shop she used to teach in. Having a proper space for teaching world languages is important for Niu Valley’s International Baccalaureate program, she added. And with the continued worries over COVID-19, having constant fresh air in the classroom “makes me feel better, for sure,” Wu said.

‘Design really matters’

The unique design of the World Languages Center poses some challenges. The school is still working on adapting the building to security lockdown requirements. The wind brings in dust. On extra-hot and still days, ceiling fans help somewhat, but some students can’t help longing for air conditioning. Still, Ahn points out that the new building is cooler than most standard non-air- conditioned classrooms.

While such a design relying only on wind for comfort might not work for, say, a school sitting on a sun-baked flat plain in West Oahu, Sakamoto acknowledges, there are elements of the process that are important to replicate in future school construction, including attention to the surrounding environment, sustainability and the teachers’ needs.

Will more Hawaii public schools be built this way or use at least some of its features and design process, or will it be one of a kind?

The state Department of Education did not respond to requests for comment, and Keone Farias, executive director of the state’s new semi-autonomous School Facilities Authority, which is taking over the state’s school construction, said the Niu Valley project began planning years before the authority launched this year.

But Farias said the building appears to have been built based on “higher-end industry standards” and that the School Facilities Authority “aims to do all of our projects at the high end of the industry standard to the extent feasible. We are working with engineers and architects to design for efficiency, cost and timeliness. Our keiki deserve this.”

Sakamoto said that the “21st Century Schools” approach, which was launched around 2014 under then-Gov. Neil Abercrombie but hasn’t since been a high priority for the state, is worth reviving, and he hopes to see the state Board of Education turn such approaches into policy. “Design really matters,” Sakamoto asserts. “The design of school building especially can really change lives, and it’ll help the students’ education.”