Sustainable Agriculture Lab

The project is a new 2,000 square foot building at the Organic Farm site. The original Program included a soils lab, food demonstration lab, lecture classroom, office space and support spaces. Due to budget constraints, the program was broken into two structures. A future, alternate building and deck was planned, but not built. The facility complements the existing farm operations and also serves as a multi-purpose center for instruction as well as community events. The building and site improvements integrate with the overall farm Long-Range Plan.

The project sustainability goals were to meet the College’s challenge to make all facilities carbon neutral by 2020. Sustainable strategies include use of structural insulated panels (SIP) for the roof, sprayed cellulose insulated 2x8 stud walls, passive solar, daylighting, separate manual switching in the daylighting zone, manual faucets (with educational signage), heat transfer from mudroom to classroom. Infrastructure is provided for future plug-ins for solar photovoltaic panels, solar hot water panels, rainwater catchment systems, and alternative fuels systems that can be run off heat from composting piles.

The project is unique in that students from The Evergreen State College led the Schematic Design and Programming Phases with oversight by a faculty instructor, and facilitated by HKP working with the students during Schematic Design. HKP took students to the Integrated Daylighting Lab to review daylighting models and to the North Cascades Environmental Learning Center to review sustainable strategies.

Sustainable features are either incorporated into the final construction or were planned to be able to be added at a future date.

The students were able to frundraise and build the stairs and deck after the original construction was completed.