PORTFOLIO
Center for Arts and Academics
Charleston, SC
The state-of-the art, LEED certified Center for Arts and Academics campus is the new home to students from two Charleston County magnet schools: School of the Arts (SOA), and Academic Magnet High School which was formerly located on a naval base that is now closed.
Approximately 1,700 students are now housed within 320,000 square feet of space. The new nine-building, multi-storied Center offers a 200-seat lecture hall and traditional-style but state-of-the-art classrooms for academic students, while providing artistic students with modern art and music studios, rehearsal space, and a 600-seat theater comparable to the North Charleston Performing Arts Center stage. Shared spaces include the cafeteria, the media center (with library and cybercafé), the gymnasium and administrative offices.
The Center is situated on land adjacent to the Oak Preserve green housing community whose construction was part of Charleston's overall urban revitalization project. Some of the green building aspects of the Center include lights with automatic switches based on room occupancy, natural light in the media center and visual arts rooms afforded by the northern positioning of full-length windows, and use of a cutting-edge, energy-efficient cooling system.
Kirlin's HVAC scope included two 400-ton chillers, 36 ice storage tanks, 12 chill water pumps, 325 variable air volume boxes and 15,841 linear feet of HVAC piping to cool the building. This system utilizes a 25% ethylene glycol mixture to freeze water in the ice storage tanks during the overnight off-peak hours, which allows the system to operate from the ice bank during the peak daytime hours and thereby save energy and improve overall system efficiency. Domestic water heating is accomplished by two gas-fired water heaters with a combined total of 1.4 million BTUH input and 12 electric storage water heaters with a combined 210,000 gallon capacity. A total of 569 plumbing fixtures and 95,075 linear feet of piping were installed, and City water pressure fluctuations necessitated two large backflow preventer stations.
