Published on the VCBO Architecture website
Golden Spike Elementary School is a new 2 story school built on an existing school site in Brigham City, Utah. The new 1000 student school population brings two existing elementary schools from the District together under one roof. The District selection committee evaluated many different existing prototypes throughout the State of Utah, and elected to modify an existing award winning Davis School District prototype design first seen at Odyssey Elementary School in North Salt Lake City, Utah, and repeated multiple times in many districts throughout the State.
Golden Spike Elementary has been designed to be a net zero energy building through the inclusion of a robust building envelope, the use of a 3 stage evaporative cooling system coupled with a geo-thermal heat pump system and highly efficient LED lighting. This approach has reduced the annual operating costs for previous versions of this prototype to approximately 37 cents per square foot, as opposed to the 98 cents per square foot most current designs are operating at. Additionally, a photovoltaic array has been included to further reduce the energy costs of this building. This additional measure has been estimated to reduce the remaining operating costs to approximately 17 cents per square foot.