Nueva School | Bay Meadows Campus

The Nueva School’s new Bay Meadows campus provides a beautiful, comfortable, and collaborative learning environment for students in grades 9 through 12. Exterior sunshades double as wind scoops, and organic gardens biofiltrate stormwater. Solar panels offset many of the school’s energy use, and thermal chimneys capture the wind to ventilate the building naturally.

Integral Group provided full mechanical, electrical, and plumbing design services for the project and energy modeling and design of the photovoltaic (PV) array.

The campus is an interactive model for sustainable building design and low resource-consumption learning. Low-flow plumbing fixtures throughout the campus reduce water usage. Windows are carefully placed throughout the building to maximize airflow, and a control system ramps down or turns off the mechanical cooling system when the windows are open.

During the cooler months, the well-insulated building envelope reduces the need for mechanical heating. We designed an in-slab radiant system to provide energy-efficient heating and a high level of thermal comfort throughout the building. In-slab radiant systems are particularly effective for rooms with high transient loads, such as classrooms, which fill and empty several times daily.