St. John's-Kilmarnock School - Dining Hall and Library Commons Building

The space plan design includes generous congregating space in front of the dining hall, high school gathering space at the end of the hallway from the upper school and a bright connecting hallway/galleria with lockers down one side and a vestibule at each end. This galleria serves to provide an indoor connection from the school wings and outside to the dining hall and learning commons building and facilities. The dining hall is generous in size with high ceilings, the floor to underside of 2nd floor structure in the dining hall is approximately 15’ and will have floating ceiling panels with sound blanket to absorb sound in what could be a noisy environment. The dining hall connects to the outside via multiple doors opening onto the patio with steps down providing direct access to the sports fields. Access to upstairs is intended to be by the main, well appointed front staircase which has a glass frontage giving direct views to outside allowing better safety and feeling of security. The main book storage and reading area is spacious with a 4m high ceiling with exposed white painted sound acoustic deck and will have copious natural light with glass to ground windows. The work rooms and media room are set up with one partition wall in glazed aluminum providing open viewing facilitating easy supervision of various work areas from outside the rooms. Many of the elements of this expansion have been constructed using components of our prefabricated KIWI CONDO Building System. The building is designed to be energy efficient and exceeds energy efficiency stipulated by the latest building code, updated in 2012. The energy efficiency has been achieved by a combination of things including a hydronic in-floor heating and cooling system with ventilation including an energy recovery system. This system is not only more energy efficient, there is also less maintenance and it has less ductwork trunks taking up valuable floor and ceiling space. Insulation below the reinforced concrete throughout creates a thermal mass of the floor thereby providing a very comfortable environment. The prefabricated wall assemblies include masonry veneers and achieve higher than average energy savings. Prefinished, maintenance free aluminum—wood grain exterior products for the soffits, fascia and all exterior veneers are long lasting, nontoxic and are not affected by the sun. Site work included a turf stone driveway added for fire truck access; patio in front of the dining room which flows around to the front entrance. Roof canopies project out from the front entrance and around the dining room corner to give shelter while waiting for busses, friends or others. Areas disturbed by construction were made accessible again with new sod, grades will be changed to tie in with the patio and front entrance. The new building addition semi encloses the courtyard between middle and upper school and drainage from the area is to be achieved primarily with a new storm water catch basin set into the lowest area and piped underground to tie in with the catch basin already existing at the roadway in front of the building. A land overflow for storm water has been designed to allow water overflow out of the courtyard area across the breezeway in case of a flood event, this overflow area is lower than finished floor level of the school buildings. St. John's-Kilmarnock School Dining Hall and Library Commons Building