Denver’s First LEED Gold School and Zero Energy Community Campus
By: Andrew Michler
As a part of the USGBC’s Rocky Mountain Green Conference we packed our lunch box and went on a tour of Denver’s first LEED Gold School. What makes this campus unique is how DLR Group Architects designed it to be a community hub. The newly-minted Evie Garrett Dennis Campus radiates out from the core building with a student union and multipurpose space, and the project utilizes energy-efficient building strategies and a huge solar array that make it practically net-zero energy.
The campus is located on the fringe of eastern Denver suburbia, a vast tract of new construction projects and cul-de-sacs. While it’s not located in the most sustainable of developments ,the design does reflect the need for a community center in such a fast growing area. The campus is actually a series of separate schools anchored by a main building that hosts cafeterias, meeting rooms, a gym and 300 kW of solar panels on its white roof. Dubbed the Student Union Building it, is actually run like a business for events, providing much-needed space for the growing community.
Three nearly identical buildings with marquee overhangs provide a multitude of educational opportunities — including a charter school for k – 2nd grade, a public science and technology high school, and a middle school. The unusual set-up allows for the campus to adapt to changing education needs in the community. The school itself is an educational tool for green building, and it has a lot to teach the students and faculty about how buildings work.