[Maria D'Orsi]: I understand.
[Michael Pardek]: I mean, people don't want to get it. It's terrible. But never reading. No. Yeah. I mean, it's a good point. There's a little kid literature that just doesn't work.
[Martine Dion]: But wouldn't the student system need to develop on top of it?
[Luke Preisner]: Do people want to? I don't hear yours as well.
[Michael Pardek]: I checked my. Christian's website traffic. Like, wow, we got 25 visitors. Like, half of those are probably me, just checking to see who's going. Or we had a big spike in Chinese traffic for some week. Like, just servers from China. I don't know, we had quite that reach. We did work that out, because I was really excited, because I said, wow. Because I didn't look at where it was coming from. I said, wow, we just spiked, like, triple or nothing. It's an international congregation. And then, boom, it's like, I've got to go read all the things that's going on. Yeah, it was fun. It was fun. Thank you. Would you like access to that? Yeah. Awesome. I am.
[Matt Rice]: I will say, I think that Kate has the best strategy in terms of letting someone know when the slide needs to change, because she just works it into her narrative, and she says, on the next slide, you will see. And it's just, it's wonderful, because it's not like a non sequitur in terms of saying, next slide, next slide, right? Just, she's very, very polished. The next chapter, yeah.
[SPEAKER_27]: I'll see what I can do, Matt.
[SPEAKER_06]: Anyone that is online virtually, we are going to
[Matt Rice]: start up probably in about five minutes or so. We appreciate you being punctual and on time. We just usually like to give a little bit of time for people to trickle in, whether we're in person here or those that are joining us virtually. So just hang tight. We will get going short here.
[Theresa Dupont]: Hi, Matt. Just double checking that there's a sign-in sheet in the room.
[Matt Rice]: Thank you so much. There certainly is. In my backpack.
[Aaron Olapade]: I appreciate your sister so long.
[Unidentified]: I think there's, yeah, there are classes back there. Is that courtyard over there? That courtyard should be over there.
[SPEAKER_24]: But I'm not sure if there's, there's never been windows in here since I've been here.
[Unidentified]: even before they reach it.
[SPEAKER_24]: No, I think there is something over there, because if you go out the hall, there's offices over there.
[Unidentified]: There's a nurse's office over there.
[SPEAKER_24]: The bathroom's there. Nurses are on the other side.
[Suzanne Galusi]: I really wanted to take my bathroom. There's an advisor's office there.
[SPEAKER_24]: And then there's the- Advisor's, like, right there. Uh-huh.
[Unidentified]: And then there's the overpass. And then the nurse is on the other side of the overpass next to the- except the nurse is on the second floor, not the third floor, but by the path. Once you know the building, it's really not that bad. The worst part about this building, quite honestly, I mean, for people getting around, is when you come for any sort of sporting events, trying to get to the back of the building or know where to get to.
[Maria D'Orsi]: Where's the gym? I'm like, oh, go, go in the pool. And so I realized, I wouldn't stick it in. There's no sign that says where to go. And these people are so confused. I'm the one that's always dark.
[Unidentified]: And so often, I'm like, OK, go this way, or like, no one else.
[SPEAKER_24]: Well, when you come to the pool during the day, and you can't go in the pool entrance, you have to go around the back of the gym.
[Unidentified]: Oh, my god. Yeah.
[SPEAKER_24]: To the other pool.
[Unidentified]: I was going to say, see, I'm not drunk, but you just keep cropping them. Jim doors to get a bad number.
[SPEAKER_24]: Yes, we appreciate that.
[Maria D'Orsi]: Yeah. And then they go around and on from it. Okay. To be clear by we, I mean my coach, I have not done anything. Please don't be mad at me. Oh, I laugh every time Pam walks around and I'm like, really? Someone's going to do it. And then it started getting from the end of the day, which is. What's 50% of the hot and other 50% inside for a game.
[Unidentified]: Well, I will happily admit that I have had to. put on my desk constantly and I don't know how that can be the same thing.
[Maria D'Orsi]: So that's what's going on your desk in your paper problems.
[Unidentified]: No, I have one here and one here. But I'm not the only teacher.
[Martine Dion]: And it's like a principal has her face, Peter.
[Unidentified]: Like another teacher has like screams upon the thesis. And then they're showing us how to fill the thesis. So which one are you?
[SPEAKER_06]: We all overlapped there.
[Unidentified]: That being said, I feel like I'm so used to this point that Well, I've gotten smart, but it's. It's. It would be my. No worries.
[Maria D'Orsi]: Every travel basketball game, I'm like, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. If you don't know, but they said, no, right. There's not me. That's a gym entrant. Just as insane. It's like, where are you looking? Well, it probably was at some point, but it says there's a community. Yes. Cool. None of them actually say Jim. No. Yeah. I just, I don't know. I mean, I've been here for four and a half months.
[SPEAKER_24]: I have a long list of who thought that was a good idea.
[Maria D'Orsi]: It sure does. It's probably long. It's just hidden, and then you get the thing.
[SPEAKER_24]: All right, what's the name?
[Maria D'Orsi]: I'm just trying to find a spot that's not going to be on the computer, so I don't know.
[Unidentified]: It's not going to be great. Yeah, no worries. Don't let me leave without giving you. I won't, but if I don't get it, I'll get it. OK. So thank you. Has somebody, I know you guys have had people come around and do surveys of everything. Does anybody watch the traffic flows in the morning and afternoon? They have?
[Michael Pardek]: Yes. It's still working.
[Martine Dion]: I've just never seen anyone standing outside my classroom in the afternoon.
[SPEAKER_24]: I think they stand down by the corner.
[Martine Dion]: So can I suggest that somebody stands where the parents start honking at each other around up in the back, like by the community schools entrance, honking at each other.
[SPEAKER_24]: I believe you.
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[Suzanne Galusi]: I took Steve Miller drive.
[SPEAKER_24]: And then they watched the different spots around the front, like watching and counting what goes up the loop and comes around the other way.
[Maria D'Orsi]: This is what they do when they park, and they pull over, and they honk at each other.
[Unidentified]: For reference, at the back corner of the building, you can't, and they just.
[Michael Pardek]: Yeah, because they're all away from the curb.
[Martine Dion]: No, but then sometimes there are people parked over there, and then the buses can't turn, and they honk at each other, and they do like two rows. I'm just letting you know, things are so many no's that it's.
[SPEAKER_05]: Oh, it's hot.
[Maria D'Orsi]: But I know, I wasn't sure if they were like, I was like, I think they're just at the front of the building. And that's where the parents almost said. But I really put all the way over there. All right.
[Matt Rice]: So we took a brief foray into our site and safety and security. Overstepping our advisory team, which is OK. Because that's what we go over quickly. There's a lot of overlap between us. But we are going to get going with our exterior interior design advisory team meeting number two. I can get the slides to wake up. We'll move forward. So we'll do a quick round of introductions of the design team. Again, just so you feel at least talk with me primarily, but we're still going to have a lot of opportunity for dialogue as we go forward. I will do, as I've done at the other second iteration of these meetings, just give an opportunity. Does anyone knew that was not able to introduce themselves at the first meeting from the Medford team? I'm happy to allow a couple minutes just to allow people to tell us about themselves and serve their connection to the project. We're going to do a quick recap in terms of what we went over in terms of meeting one as part of this discussion. We're going to talk a little bit about the context of civic architecture that is here within the city and what that means for this project moving forward. We're going to talk about the how we formulate, think about exterior materials moving forward at a very high level. We're not getting too specific just yet. And similarly, we're going to talk a little bit about interior design and materiality for the interior of the building. And then lastly, talk about the concept of experiential graphic design and how that can help connect to and reinforce the culture of the building. And we'll wrap up just going over some next steps. All right, so just a real introduction very quickly. Again, my name is Matt Rice. I'm an architect with SMMA. We'll go in the room here. We have one other. I'm Michael Pardek. I'm also an architect, project designer. Online, I think Helen may join us in a couple of minutes. She is our project manager. I know we have Sarah online.
[SPEAKER_27]: Hi, everybody. Sarah Long, interior design with SMMA.
[Matt Rice]: And I think we have Soala as well.
[Theresa Dupont]: Hi, everyone. Good to see you all again. It's Soala, architectural designer at SMMA.
[SPEAKER_04]: And Matt, I'm here as well. Lucas Carrier, designer at SMMA.
[Matt Rice]: Great. Is there anyone else that I missed from the design team? And just I'll give an opportunity. Do we have folks from left field?
[s093VSbtp08_SPEAKER_01]: Yes, Jen Carlson here I and Matt Galeno will be joining us shortly shortly I am the project director with left field the owners project manager and Matt Galeno will be joining us shortly is the day to day project manager.
[Matt Rice]: Great Thank you. All right, and then, this is our medford advisory team members. Is there anyone on the line. that is a new member that didn't get a chance to introduce, not a new member, but was on this list, but wasn't able to make the first meeting that wants to just do a quick introduction. All right, I'm going to keep moving, taking that as a no. We're just giving this quick reminder probably at every meeting as we go forward. And as this evolves and gets updated as we move forward, we'll change this. But for the time being, this is still Our schedule as it's laid out currently, a fall opening of 2030 is our goal post that we're moving towards. The starred touch points that we have here for the advisory team meetings, and this is every one of the four meetings are going to happen at each one of these start points. The second meeting where we are now is still in this first portion of the feasibility study where we are. The next meeting that we're going to have, number three, actually is going to happen towards the beginning of March. We'll get the specific uh, time, date, um, towards the end of the meeting. Um, but this is going to be the, the final meeting that we have in this portion of the repeatability, not the final meeting goal for all. And then just a reminder that this exterior and interior design advisory team meeting is part of a collection, um, of these four, uh, groups, um, that I'll, I'll just keep saying it over and over again, that these are not siloed activities or discussions that are happening There is a lot of overlap that happens and we do want to focus in on these topics to have some conversations so that we can understand what the community is thinking and sort of where the community's priorities and goals are moving forward. We'll bring those together and these will all come back to the full building committee of recommendations coming out of this process, the series of meetings that we're in right now. All right, I think there's an animation on the slide. This is a slide that we have reviewed a couple of times. We reviewed it last night with the full building committee. We're sharing it again here just because it's pertinent in terms of the topic of design when we start thinking about what the building may look like on the outside and the inside to understand how we're progressing along. What we shared with the building committee last night was repeated over and over again that was not design options, but really high-level cost alternatives. Eventually though those will evolve into design concepts. And it's really going to be part of what we talk about here as we move forward in terms of getting some input and feedback. We're going to get input and feedback from a lot of different sources and voices as we go through the process. But this is one that will have some specific conversations as we get to sort of that next level. Um, of having, um, sort of moving things from those cost models into actual design options. And again, if you did not catch the meeting last night, we did have 29, um, different. High level cost models, um, that are being put out, um, out into the world, um, for cost estimating. Um, we reviewed with the building committee last night or really confirmed, um, that this is a correct number that we want to look at. Um, these are really discreet. cost approaches in terms of how we are either building new construction, doing partial addition and renovation of the existing building, or all the way on the left-hand side just doing a baseline code upgrade. So we're not going to revisit the entirety of that meeting from last night. That's not the point of this discussion today. We just wanted to share the fact that these are out there. We can certainly circle back if people are curious about any aspects of these. as it pertains to the subject matter of this particular advisory team. But there is some connection between what we talked about last night and what we're going to discuss here. All right. So I'm going to turn it over to Michael.
[Michael Pardek]: All right. So it's always good to remember what we talked about last night. There's been a lot of meetings between then and now. So I think it's important to remember Try to recap, we collected all the information provided and took related notes. And then we tried to synthesize that down to a few, collect those under some themes. It's always very helpful to take the range of things that we talked about from what color should the brick be to who are we as a school and everything in between. So word clouds are helpful, but just the first one that we heard a few times was to do more for us. We should be looking at timeless design, timeless materials over trendy things, things that are maybe flashes in the pan, and that we should embrace simplicity, strength, make choices that are beautiful, materials that are beautiful and look good and exude a certain comfort and excitement people are using the building. And on the flip side, looking at life cycle costs, looking at things like maintenance, which plays into the long-term value of that material and keeping it keeping it looking good, not beat up. So a couple of people that were fond of this building, the concrete that is all around us, it's honesty and longevity. And this last phrase really stuck out to us is that every material should earn its place in this building. That we're not here to, decorate things with things that don't have purpose. Second kind of broad bucket was materials, material health, sustainability. Many people mentioned going after rentless free materials, materials that are low in toxicity, the PVC vinyls for the project, setting the occupant. Occupant well-being, health is paramount. That's both the physical and emotional side of that. Again, maintenance will be a big theme, especially as we get way down the road. We are selecting materials for classrooms, for hallways, for like this with movable furniture, it all gets down to that level of detail of how well that material holds up over time. And avoiding things like waxing floors and working with the custodial staff to understand how the building is cared for over time. And that sustainability has always been a very high priority for this district, for this school. So that goes without saying. We're investigating all those scenarios for, is it LEED? Is it passive house? Is it living building challenge? That'll all get discussed as we start creating buildings and sites. Next. Next big thing here was about the civic role of the building. A lot of it was about what we were just kind of briefly talking about before is, you know, the clarity and the site circulation. Do people intuitively know where to go or are they getting lost the moment they make a right turn onto the site? Some Some thought that Medford as a city lacks public space. So school, the flagship as a great opportunity to help fill that gap. Of course, there's gonna be a lot of amazing, there are a lot of amazing programs here that draw people in, whether it's the pool or the fields. There's a new auditorium and performing arts portion of the project. That's not hidden, but it's very much part of the public realm celebrated. And that'd be civic spaces. I like this word, beacons in time of crisis. It might talk about times of crisis a little bit later on when I talk about the civic architecture and its response to it. Another theme was flexibility of the space and student ownership. So I think that flexibility goes both ways, both long-term flexibility, you know, the educational model today may not be the educational model in 40 years, 50 years. So creating spaces that can evolve over time, creating systems as well that can evolve over time. And yet the other flexibility comment was more about the day-to-day sort of the class, the class use of, you know, when class of 2026 starts to have an English ability, how do they make it theirs for their duration here? And so you imagine the waves of students and cohorts coming through the school and how can we create environments that allow them to have some sense of ownership, There's a lot of that as we walk the halls here today. There's a lot of murals and things like that are either painted on a wall or in a display case. There's artifacts from probably the old school that are found out here. Sarah will talk about how to incorporate some of that stuff a little bit later on, a little bit later on. This one is pretty obvious, but we have an amazing site. amazing setting within the fells. So seeing that is not just an afterthought, but how you really take advantage of the fells throughout the season. It's always changing through the season. And there is a few really amazing views of the skyline from higher up and higher up the site. Those are important when it comes time to even thinking about where we're positioning blocks of space within a building, or which direction classroom space. So that'll all come into play as we're starting to scope space and form. And looking for ways to, this says rooftop access, but it could be a rooftop, it could be offsite access for teaching spaces, for science, for events, for CTE yards that become less of a storage place and more of a showcase. And there's a few other landscape architecture related things. Some about the durability of the landscape. We have 1,300 students plus teachers, public moving through the school and grounds. So creating that in a way that is both beautiful and durable and able to be upkept. That's always a critical conversation to have. Not to mention the things don't really happen today. And of course, there's a few historical, there's somewhere on your site, there's a quarry or a landfill, depending on which lens you wanna see that through. And then probably the overarching thing here is, I think, belonging and creating. whether that be from the architecture itself, whether that be how the Mustang identity is woven, not in a, like, just with the logo everywhere, but, you know, are the ways that weave it through the architecture, through the interiors, a way that's beautiful and thoughtful and creative. that all these things coming together, the materials we select, the graphics, the things that the students are able to create, not just on day one, but for the life of the building, that these are, they're able to be displayed off the leads throughout the building. So we thought about this in trying to sum all that up of what we thought we heard, tried to, challenge ourselves to get it to a concise statement. And, you know, for us, we talked a lot about the range from materials to feelings and what things are about, but, you know, at the heart of all this, I think what we heard is this deep sense of trying to create a place where students belong, where families belong, where people that don't have kids who are Citizens in Bedford feel like they belong. And visitors, you know, from other school districts, they come to the field, or they come to plays and things like that, that they belong with as well. So that's the purpose and belonging at heart. And so how do we achieve that? Achieve that through selecting materials with purpose, value, We're trying to achieve this timeless identity through creating spaces that are flexible and feature ready and underpinning it all as a healthy space, space full of sustainability that's not just tacked on, but really woven into the fabric of the school. And then on this outer ring, these are all the things that maybe you thought when you joined this committee, you'd be talking about, the color of metal panel and things like that. So those are all this outer frame. The materials and the aesthetics of the building, the wayfinding artwork, how people find their way around the site for athletics, after hours events, how the landscape feels and interacts with the building and the greater site, and daylight views and the comfort So that's kind of this outer ring. So we tried to kind of echo what we thought we heard in the first meeting. Put it in a form that gave it a little bit of structure. It definitely had a major kind of why at the Senate at all.
[Matt Rice]: I sort of neglected as we jumped into the introduction and sort of the agenda. Generally the format for these second meetings is that we're going through in sort of groups or chapters of the discussion, take about like 12, 10 minutes with each one of these and have a little bit of presentation of content and then also have some feedback discussion or thoughts associated with it. So for this first one, this is really just trying to get a sense of whether or not what we're sharing back to you resonates, right? Is this, does it seem like we've heard Um, the feedback that came to us during this first meeting, um, are there things that, that you're thinking about that you mentioned last time that maybe aren't reflected here that could be, or are there some other thoughts that have sort of come out of this, um, that you think might be interesting to add to the conversation? Um, so we'll just take a couple minutes and feel some thoughts there, and then we'll move on to the next sort of chapter. completely accurate and good, which we might just take the silence for. We will use the time in the other chapters as we move forward. That's fine.
[Unidentified]: So three rings is a nice way to organize it. I think that I can capture the categories. You can categorize them all.
[Michael Pardek]: Yeah, it's hard to, when you're talking about design, it's just hard to have a formula. But I think just doing it, this is kind of like how scientific might do it, right? There's a why in the middle, and then you have a how, the what around, but it just felt like, you know, the amount of things that we heard that there was a maybe a simple way to help frame it. And to be able to go back to this, you know, but we're in more heated, you know, maybe in the future when we're in more heated discussions about why we're doing certain things or why we're selecting certain things. We might use this as kind of our star.
[Suzanne Galusi]: I think, I mean, I want to echo what Libby said because I think the visual of this captures things really nicely. Having been, like Marta and I have been in every single session that we've done between visioning and leadership and forum. And I think that that really reflects what we've heard from teachers, from staff, from students. I said in one of the several meetings that we've been in that the most impactful part for me so far was during the educational forum work and listening to students. And they talked about the kinds of spaces where they felt the most connection or sense of belonging. So. And we did hear from from teachers who it's a shift to have to have some shared spaces and what will, you know, really help them be able to, you know, have a space where they can do their planning and they're collaborating with colleagues. This really does reflect all of those conversations we've been a part of. So.
[Michael Pardek]: All right. We're going to do a little, like a class here. We're going to talk about materials, no, no, civic architecture, and a little bit, Matt will talk about materials afterwards. But kind of on the material front, I thought I'd wait for way back in Medford history to talk about some of the first materials that that really meant something. And those were shipbuilding and brick picking towards kind of the mid-16 to 1700s. But I thought I'd start here, instead of just jumping right into looking at some of the civic buildings that say that, you know, there is a long history here. We know some of these, the gold in these industries are kind of died out. in the 1700s and 1800s, but it's still important to recognize the history. And I think there's a really good tie to, I was thinking earlier about our CTE spaces here, like that hands-on, like it was happening here even back then, you know, of course, we had the skill and the material, right? We had wood, we had the skill to build ships, we had the river to be able to send them out in the rain, same with brickmaking. There's a lot of clay and natural materials that resourceful people turned into an industry. So I thought that was an interesting place to start. And then I'm just going to roll through just some civic buildings. And these are kind of civic buildings by era almost. I've just pulled out a handful of the ones that that were mentioned last time and some new ones and some that I drove by on the way up here, which is kind of cool. The first one is the 1891 building. I thought this was a really good place to start, because this one, you think about buildings and how they're forming their material. If you think about an armory, you think, like, of a top building, right? I'm holding a lot of important things. Historically, they were used to hold ambitions and things like that. Over time, they evolved into more community spaces in some cities. But you can see with this Romanesque revival, the stone is really rustic. It's got these castle-like turrets. So it's really trying its hardest to exude strength. That's 1891. Down in the square, the big old block is late 1800s. That's kind of a late Victorian Queen Anne style. That's kind of characterized, can't really see in the photo, but the brickwork is really ornate. There's a lot of detail. It's very intricate. A lot of these buildings express their verticality. See it all the way up through the that should be like elements in this corner, turn on the corner, which is clad in copper. That's pretty typical of any Victorian or Anne style, just trying to stretch out that monumentality, but also giving the people inside, especially that corner room, kind of the visibility of the intersection square below.
[Unidentified]: Perfect spot for it, Duncan.
[Michael Pardek]: Right? Yeah, and adaptable, right?
[Maria D'Orsi]: Adaptable.
[Michael Pardek]: Yeah. Just up the street, the theater. So it's 1939. It's part of the old high school building. It's a great revival. And I thought what was interesting about this is this building and the City Hall, which I'll show next, we're all part of the built during the later part of the depression. And when you think about what buildings are reacting to, I don't think that was a really great optimistic time. So in times of crisis, especially back in the early, late 1800s, early 1900s, architects and designers were going after these revivals. So you'll see this is a Greek revival, the city calls a colonial revival, They're trying to call back to a previous time. A lot of it's nostalgia, like, oh, it was so great back then. Let's recall that. So you'll see a lot of this, especially in these New Deal era buildings. Of course, being a theater, recalling Greek is not a bad place to start. classic Greek theaters that we see all the time. And Greece also being the cradle of democracy doesn't hurt your country. It's very recall those sentiments. City Hall as well. Not that old, 1937. Like I said, it's another one of these revivals that's calling back to a more patriotic time, perhaps. So that's the story here. It's got a kind of symmetry. It's got a very tall element in the middle so that you can see it from around. But again, it's calling back. Again, this was at the very end of the Depression. So probably built, both of these buildings, probably built with a lot of rural labor I forget which one of the new deal soups, it's either the WPA or EWA agencies that were going through the country building these buildings. We're gonna fast forward a little bit. Just to keep everybody on their toes here. But, you know, Medford Police Station, I'd call this like, very civic structure, but it definitely shows it's kind of a serious building. It shows its utility and it's branded. It's branded both with very large signs and this not so subtle blue with waves and brick. So, I mean, police stations really have a tough balance between kind of suiting, protection, but they're also becoming places that are welcoming people in. The interior is actually pretty good. There's some public space that has wood, but from this angle, it feels like it's protecting itself with these arms that are forming the ramps, but it feels like it's kind of holding on to itself. Well, probably the architect said, well, we'll make the corner all glass. but still feels a little paper. And then the library, the library is probably, I don't know, one of the nicer examples of a civic building, just opened a few years back. It ties into the first slide. You could definitely see a connection with the form of the building, splinterized, almost imagined. One of the clipper ships, sure that, These roof ornaments were inspired by shipbuilding and industries like that. And a really good example of a, not so obvious here, but this is maybe one of the first net zero libraries, estates perhaps. But if you look from the aerial view, the whole rooftop is covered with photovoltaic panels. They did a really good job here. It's really welcoming, welcoming spot, city. Kind of a interesting dichotomy of two civic buildings and what they're doing. Now getting to the high school, these are, well, some of these pictures are of the high school, but the 1970s were, early 70s, late 60s were a really interesting time. I just, while researching this project, was looking at who designed this building. Somebody must have signed it, but I opened up a couple of these 1970 architecture magazines. This is all you see, for the most part. We're told it was a guy that designed Christmas straps.
[Unidentified]: So many high schools.
[Michael Pardek]: So this late modernist style. almost a brutal architecture, which is raw concrete, single-pane glass that was used for schools, it was used for funeral homes, offices, banks, maintenance laboratories. It was like the style of the day. So it's not anything crazy. I think Salem High School, which is also going through this same process, it's also of that same era. So it kind of looks very similar. But there was a really good spread in the yearbook from 1970 of this little photo essay that was put together. But I'll kind of read through some of these lines. As the natural terrain was reshaped by dirt, concrete, earth-moving machines, a man-made beauty evolved that rivaled its own natural order. Beauty is in the eye of the shibboleth, a world of coherence and order that even nature could not believe was excitedly emerging. Surely brick and mortar could not live in green. Yeah, I mentioned, you know, I mentioned architecture responding to what's going on. This is like Vietnam era, a lot of craziness going on. So a building and the previous building had the fire. So a lot of chaos, right, going on during this time. So probably the school building committee at that time, the architects, you know, a search, you know, a search for order and clarity is certainly what they did here. from the way the corridors are laid out, the way the buildings are nicely placed together, pretty regular courtyards, and even getting down to the system of the facade, right? There's rules, there's definitely rules that were applied, whether it be how we treat stairs, how we treat windows, how we treat sunshades, everything was was ordered orderly and in control. Quote by Marcus Aurelius, I think basically says that, I think Churchill's got a similar quote, but, you know, we shape our buildings and our buildings shape us. So that's kind of what we're embarking on. It was the environment who creates, materials who select, all have impact on the occupants, how they grow, how they learn, how they interact with each other. So now's a good maybe moment to pause. Just kind of threw out this question. I've seen some of the civic places. Is there a connection between Those places, this place, they're not a connection. What does it mean to be a civic building today?
[Matt Rice]: And this building does have as much significance as Sidney Hall as a public library. It is the flagship school for the school district. It is so much more than just the high school as well, that it does have this type of prominence. it doesn't necessarily need to have any particular aesthetic connection, but it's definitely worth talking that through to understand are there thoughts, are there feelings out there as to how it may connect or how it may not? It seems out of place other than the police station.
[Luke Preisner]: With the other buildings, this seems like a completely different, like the police station and the high schools seem like different flavors than everything else.
[SPEAKER_24]: I know that in Marble Dead, or going to the Marble Dead projects, they wanted all the buildings to tie together. They wanted to be cohesive.
[Unidentified]: But there's, I would say, the police station aside, this building has masonry, it's got bravitas, it's got dignity, and maybe some people may think it's ugly, but it has a lot of the weight that the other buildings have, and a sense of entry point. that's meant to welcome people. So I think that, yeah, the style is really different, for sure. But it has that that ties things together. I mean, if you look at photo of the Edwards, I think more so than like that. I don't know what that photo is.
[SPEAKER_24]: Yeah, just I walk, you know, I haven't been to some of these buildings, but if I walk up to the city hall, I feel like, wow, it's interesting. It's welcome. I feel welcome to go there just on a Sunday when the building architecture to the high school.
[Michael Pardek]: I don't feel it feels very cold, very distant. Part of it's because it's so far setback in the administrative, you know.
[Unidentified]: Well, again, it doesn't have a super clear entrance because of where you drive up. You then have to turn. You don't see it, you know, like all of these, you see very clearly where you go in or what's standing out. And the high school doesn't have that unless you know to turn and go to a certain spot, you know, go there. And all the other schools, I think, feel like they have more of an entrance, too, in the district.
[Michael Pardek]: Yeah. Somebody has their hand raised. I'm just going to put my glasses on so we can see. Delia.
[izVdDtzaCdw_SPEAKER_28]: Hi, everybody. Sorry to be on Zoom while you are all in person. But in thinking about your question, I was just considering the different users of the high school, and in particular, the students. One might argue that the way in which this project is connected to kind of like the civicness of Medford could be in demonstrating what that means for students. So, you know, in educating students what it is to be civically minded or, you know, even thinking about other users like the greater community, you know, being, you know, connected, being a space in which community can gather. or to demonstrate to itself how to show what belonging means or, you know, showing up for each other means or, you know, any number of values that we might identify. So I think there's a really core component, like what distinguishes perhaps this from some of the other buildings would be the student component that it can educate in a way what it means to be civically minded.
[Luke Preisner]: Paul, go ahead.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Sort of jumping off of what Delia had said, you know, when you were describing how a lot of architecture seems to be reflecting on a better time, I mean, we don't have to get into how Was it really a better time? You know, nostalgia is often not related to reality. But I think, you know, the school is always about the future. It's like by default. you know, certainly we can have seniors in for education, but we don't make people go to high school or public school at the end of their lives for a reason, because this is helping them prepare to go forward. And so I do hope we can sort of avoid any kind of nostalgia approach to design. You know, like the, when we were building ships, it was, It's a part of Medford's history. I'm not saying that's not important, but there were also a lot of enslaved people here. And we often just move along as if we just had chips and rum and everything was dandy. And that's not the truth. And I do feel uncomfortable sort of perpetuating the myth of how great things used to be. Because I think it doesn't serve, in particular, it doesn't serve our students who, if they're doing a good, if we're doing a great job teaching them, then they are going to be far more aware than the rest of us sitting here of what history really was like. So, you know, I I think I'm loving, I love this, this look across the architecture of the city and the library in particular. I think there's a way to weave in, you know, a theme, if you will, like whether ships and shipbuilding is a theme we can weave in or not is something that would be interesting to explore because a bunch of buildings that aren't related at all. It doesn't feel like it's part of a community necessarily, but I do think figuring out how we can make sure it's forward facing and not based on nostalgia is super important. Thank you.
[Matt Rice]: Great. I'm going to take one more. I think Jesse, you have your hand up, and then we're going to shift forward to make sure that we can touch on some of the other topics for today.
[izVdDtzaCdw_SPEAKER_04]: Thanks. I'm just wondering, based on like the talk about nostalgia and how things fit into Medford, just to me, I feel like the usability and the sort of accessibility of the building winds up communicating its belonging far more than, you know, trying to tap into what is Medford's character and its architecture, just because that's always changing. But to me, a wildly different architectural style, if that were to be used in the high school, wouldn't necessarily doom itself to being unsuccessful if it doesn't fit into a sort of Medford character so much as if it doesn't communicate that this is for everyone in the town the way, you know, some of the older civic buildings and the new libraries seem very accessible and usable versus the current high school which, you know, looks more like industrial sort of and like a hydroelectric dam or something that you're not really sure where the access points are and what's happening inside of it. That's all.
[Matt Rice]: Yeah, I think that's a great point. And for clarity, I don't think we're suggesting that there's any emulation that we're putting forth at this point. We were really just, and you all have done a fantastic job of just thinking about the topic and sort of whether or not there's sort of guidance there or thoughts, lessons to be taken from what's in there. But there's certainly more to come on that conversation as we move forward in the process. So we're gonna talk a little bit more about exterior materials, right? So just to keep going on the theme of, Precedence within this case, the district we have here the other school buildings that are located within the city. The elementary schools in the middle schools here, and you can see there's a there's a good predominance of brick with some accent materials associated with them. As we think about what materials may end up on the exterior of the building, we really need to keep in mind, first and foremost, that we're designing buildings that have a 50 to 75 year lifespan to them. Right, so at that initial point, it's going to preclude the use of some more residential scale products, we're not designing vinyl siding on school buildings. We're not probably designing even wood siding, natural wood siding on school buildings, given sort of the upkeep that is associated with them. So these are a collection of typical material. Brick is certainly one of them, and it is found in the city, as we just showed, and the district, as we just showed. And it's not to say that these are the full collection of materials that are out there. We'd love to hear those other materials, um, that anyone has experience with or interest in that we can investigate and move forward to the process. Um, but moving from sort of left to right is that natural materials in terms of, uh, stone, actual real stone, um, applied to a building, um, brick itself in terms of a clay fired process. Um, and that can take different forms. Um, there can also be thin versions of those. So there's different ways of putting up exterior materials on a building, whether they're laid in beds of mortar, which is sort of a more traditional approach, or sort of applied in more of a rain screen approach. There's metal panel, which can take all sorts of different forms in terms of corrugations, in terms of the metals that are being used, in terms of the finish that is applied to those metals, but metal can't have that durability to them. other types of rain screen panels, whether they're phenolic panels, and phenolic is like a fancy word for like a resin or plastic at the end of the day that's sort of modified for outdoor exposure and durability and longevity. They can have different types of materials sort of inlaid into them. So there's like wood book phenolic panels that exist out there that are used in rain screen systems. There's also porcelain panels, which again have sort of that clay base to them. that can provide a lot of durability. They can have sort of shiny reflective finishes and glossy finishes or matte finishes. There's a wide range there. And then there's terracotta panels as well. And these are generally graded from left to right. And we'll get into the next slide in terms of price point to them. Cost is of course going to be a factor in terms of the selection of the materials, but it plugs into the overall set of criteria that we're going to be using, right? Aesthetics play a role. Sustainability plays a role in terms of our selection of exterior materials, both in terms of how much energy it takes to actually fabricate these things and how many natural resources are consumed to do that. It's a very complex selection process that we'll get into as we move forward in terms of what the exterior materials on the building will end up being. Again, these are just DOP materials. We haven't even got into the topic of fenestration and what are the things that we look through BATOV. But sticking with those, penetration, which is again, fancy window, fancy word for window, essentially. So maybe I'll try to just keep on the simpler side of the terminology, but architects, we like to like trend into all the fancy words that we know, and I'll try to check myself on that. Now young people feel alone in talking about technology. It's similar, yes. So I talked a little bit about sort of the cost spectrum in terms of materials, but also sort of the durability of materials that we go through in terms of how we can sort of plot where different materials fall on this range. So we have sort of durability is our range on the top left there, and then cost, running across the bottom, you can see that masonry or brick has that sort of interesting position of being extremely durable and having a lot of longevity to it and also being sort of on the lower price point. And that is the very reason why you see brick on so many public buildings, because it does fit into a lot of sort of beneficial categories that way. There's a lot that we can do with brick. There's a lot of creativity that has been really investigated over the course of history with that. So it is a material that can be considered as part of the exterior palette as we move forward. But again, you get a sense from looking at this where some of those other materials fall in terms of that, that spectral graph that we've been looking at. And the one in the upper right-hand corner is maybe a little bit more interesting in terms of building integrated photovoltaic panels or solar panels actually applied to the base of the building. We don't see that too often. around in terms of public school buildings in Massachusetts are really too much within the country, because it is at the upper end of both the first cost investment of what goes in there, and then also in terms of durability, it is not going to last quite as long as an active technology than some of the other material. You're saying the lower on the graph, the more durable? Correct. Yeah. And then to the right-hand side, being more expensive. And then just a sampling of exterior buildings, exteriors of buildings. These are actually all SMMA projects, but just give you a sense of the range of materials that are out there as options. Again, you see a lot of brick here, but there is some composition, juxtaposition of the brick, both with modern sort of aesthetics and approaches and juxtaposed with renovated portions of buildings, glass, certainly to help both perforate the exterior of the building, right? An exterior of the building with no windows in it is not a nice building to be inside at all. So we will sort of understand that mix and that composition between glazing and opaque wall assemblies. And just some closer views of some, again, exteriors of SMA projects, just to give you a sense of some of the options and opportunities that are out there. This first one is Waltham High School, a mix of granite base, a lot of brick, but then also accent panels of composite aluminum panels up above arranged green panels. This is the Wakefield Memorial High School, which is currently under construction, so we don't have finished, but a similar palette here in terms of materials. It's not that we're arriving at these similar pallets because we're trying to design every building in a similar manner. It's more sort of the conversations like this one that we're having now and that we'll have moving forward, both here and with the full building committee to sort of understand what is that right mix of external materials that we want to be using both to talk to the character of what we're designing, but also sort of longevity of what we're designing.
[Michael Pardek]: And it's good to show that night view too, because it is a building that is used more than just the day. So it's always good to think about building throughout the life cycle of its day. How do you signal what spaces are welcoming? And we talked about that beacon at the very beginning. Not that you're trying to spill daylight out into the fells, but it will be larger spaces that are used at night.
[Matt Rice]: Yeah, I mean, designing with light is really, really an option that we have moving forward and available to us and something that we want to consider in terms of how we create a welcoming appearance at night, but also the opaque materials change at night, right? It's really the inverse condition in terms of how you approach the building and where your focus is. So it's something that we'll look at both during the day and the evening as we're studying renderings and things as we move forward. The Somerville High School does have a large proportion of terracotta paneling on the exterior of it. And that was really more due to the fact that we were building here in a historical context for the Carnegie Public Library that was immediately adjacent to the building. which had terracotta detailing that was connected and related to the brickwork. This is not that similar type of terracotta, but here we were connecting back to that, the concept of the materiality. And so it's a way of taking sort of that historical connection, reinterpreting it, providing sort of a modern aesthetic using a different kind of material. And this is a recently completed public charter school down in Roxbury, again, Using traditional materials, and this is a lot of brick again, but it has sort of what's called an iron spot, which is sort of a metal that's actually cast in and gives off a reflection, sort of a purplish hue, and really plays with the light in interesting ways when brick hits it. So again, just going to different ways of using more traditional materials. There's definitely options available to us, and this mixes in some metal panel that's both sort of an opaque color and a wood look color as well. And this is the Concord Middle School, which also just recently completed. Almost 100% of the exterior of this building is brick. There's a little bit of concrete masonry unit as well that has a polished surface to it. So different types of masonry can be used. And this actually had a lot of different sort of striations, layers of brick to add some texture and color to the exterior of the building. So we'll pause there.
[Suzanne Galusi]: Can I ask about the windows? Sure. Is that to prevent, like is that to provide shade?
[Matt Rice]: So the horizontal projections that you see coming up, yes. Yeah, they're solar control devices. So what they're trying to do and what they do do, especially when they're positioned on the southern facade, they work most effectively on the southern facade. is they control the amount of sunlight and sun, solar energy that's coming into the building during the summer months, right? And they're designed in a way so they have louvers, like little slats on them, so that during the winter, when the sun is lower, you actually do get that sun coming in to the windows and actually doing some passive heating of the space. And in the summer, when the sun is higher, the lumbers and the depth of the shade is blocking out the sun's heat that's getting into the building. So they're part of an overall sort of passive design strategy that we ended up using. So they're located on this building as well, but they're located in vertical arrangements primarily, except for where it was the science lab renovation added some of these horizontal sunshades as well. The vertical ones, they're more decorative. I would say generally they're more effective on like an Eastern and Western elevation, but they're not as effective as what we would do here. So they were definitely popular in terms of the aesthetics of the 70s when these buildings were designed. But when we use them today, we really try to make sure that they're purposeful in terms of the orientation of the building and what they're actually going to be doing from a passive design perspective.
[Suzanne Galusi]: In this particular photo in school, are those all operational windows or not?
[Matt Rice]: Each of the windows does have an operable vent to it. You can sort of see that little piece that's kicking out at an angle, opens up to allow for some convenient user control of the environment. But there's other portions of these windows that are solid and opaque and fixed. But we do provide, and we will provide here moving forward, operable windows in every classroom just for give teachers control over that environment, getting fresh air if you want that option.
[Michael Pardek]: And it should be a lot quieter. So the, any new, it'll be triple green. So right now you have a single pane, so that parent popping out your classroom window, it'll be a little quieter greenhouse.
[Matt Rice]: Any other thoughts just about the types of materials, of appropriate other materials that maybe we didn't show examples of that there's interest in us exploring?
[Michael Pardek]: probably a little bit harder to be abstract without a form and a building to look at.
[Unidentified]: Brian's physically really interesting.
[Michael Pardek]: Yeah.
[Unidentified]: Oh.
[SPEAKER_06]: Brian?
[Unidentified]: On Zoom.
[Brian Hilliard]: OK, thanks, Brian. Hi, guys. Hopefully you can hear me on Zoom. So what I like about the Concord School that you've got up right now, and particularly how well it sort of speaks back to the landscape that's right there, And a lot of that brickwork, masonry work, really reminds me of our site in some semblance, simply because we're dealing with a lot of rock, a lot of strata, a lot of the fells and that sort of back and forth speaking to each other. So I'm just curious if there's a concept even based around perhaps literally the term strata for some of the sediment layers, things like that, whatever we find when we start digging into that site. But I like that sort of, I guess, conversation back to nature. And perhaps we can pull some of the materials from the fells and some of those layered ideas, both horizontally and even, like, I love layers in architecture from nature to the interior. And if we can get some of those layers involved, that might inform maybe how we use some of the materials that you guys had shown up on the screen earlier.
[Michael Pardek]: It feels more wood-like on the top. I don't know if it's because of the lines that give me grain or the color tone and the proximity of the trees and everything. It feels more natural than concrete.
[Matt Rice]: But all brick. I mean, it's the buff color that ties into it. But it's a really rich area to explore and certainly something that we can look into as we move forward, those connections to nature and the fells, which is so So predominant on the site for sure.
[Brian Hilliard]: Yeah. But I was just going to say, I mean, it's still, you know, it's still masonry, but somebody just mentioned it. I mean, even the way you've strided that masonry could talk to like a tree ring or something like that. You know, it's, it's, you can see it in there somehow. It's, it's not much of a stretch to connect with still those, that same palette that you guys showed earlier.
[Matt Rice]: Now is that, that road is not passable. No, that's an outdoor set of outdoor classrooms that are down there. So it's pedestrian access as it runs around. So they didn't in this building have a certain ability to start to navigate the outside of the building? They did not. So there's a conversation with the fire department. We haven't had that conversation with the fire department here. We will be having it very soon. There was this significant gray drop off here around the back of the building as well. So that contributed to it. It wasn't a place that you would want to take a fire truck. So they'll acknowledge that and work with us. It can be done this way. It's true. I'm going to keep us moving forward. I don't want to shortchange Sarah too much on the timing here. But Sarah, I think I'm going to give you about 10 minutes for each of these, the last two short chapters that we have.
[SPEAKER_27]: Sure. Yeah, no, I'll go through it as quickly as I can. But feel free to interrupt me, because again, as we've been talking about a lot of this is, uh, you know, reflecting what we've heard, and we want everybody's feedback. So just stop me if I'm, uh, freezing too quickly. So, uh, first and foremost, I just wanted to kind of introduce, um, a few key elements of interior design, um, that we'll be talking about today and in the future. It's, uh, definitely not an exhaustive list, but These are all elements that really work together and are related and add different layers to the space. So again, space is three-dimensional, it's creating our flow, and really this is tied so closely to our educational plan and all of the visioning meetings that we've been having. Color, obviously, it's more than just aesthetics. it really does impact, you know, school identity, wayfinding, it can support accessibility goals. So, you know, looking at contrast and things like that, how it can impact mood, all of that color theory is something that we'll be exploring as we, you know, move forward in design. and very closely related to that is lighting. We've talked a lot today about natural light and daylight, but obviously once you move into the building and we do flood it with as much natural daylight as possible, but artificial light is also something that's going to be studied and considered. We want to make sure that we're providing the appropriate illumination for all of the activities happening, but it also does have a big impact on color. and impacts mood. The other two I wanted to touch on really quickly are often overlooked, but a layer that can really make an impact is texture and pattern. And this can, texture can either be physical touch, or it can be something that you perceive visually. And pattern can both just be, you know, a repetition of lines, but it's also a rhythm that you can feel within the space. And so that's something that we're gonna look at as we move into the next slide and we look at some of the goals that we're looking to to explore. So you know shifting into to what we think we heard in the first meeting and again we've talked a lot about this today. These are high level goals but really are going to help guide our design process particularly in the interior. So you know wanting to make sure this aligns with the goals of this group. So Moving into the interior materials, we heard you that they're going to be purposeful, durable, and value-driven. And obviously, they'll all be evaluated for maintenance and are sustainable goals. Also, we've talked a lot about the importance of the connection to the exterior, both the glazing, creating a visual and physical connection, but the design palette and overall design goals for the exterior. definitely trickle into the interior as well. And we wanna design something that encourages movement, engagement, student autonomy was something that was brought up in the last meeting and really providing materials and patterns that can support that. And then again, we really wanna root this in a timeless neutral palette and be very intentional about the different accent colors and lighting features and things like that. to build upon that neutral palette. So just a quick check-in that this kind of aligns with everybody. Yes.
[Michael Pardek]: One thing, just for some interior materials, like sitting in this room here, I know this is a specifically no-wax floor, but it looks, almost strikes me as feeling dirty. It doesn't, and it hasn't held up well. I know hopefully newer materials that are low maintenance will book better longer kind of thing. Does that make sense?
[SPEAKER_27]: It does. It does. Yeah. And we'll talk a little bit more about some specific materials and how we can really achieve these goals, even in like the next couple of slides. So, but all of that feedback is excellent. So yeah. So basically in order to reach those goals, we do kind of reference back to some basic interior design principles. And what I've put together here is also a couple of precedent images of recent SMMA projects. Just as examples, you know, there's a lot of different elements here. So, again, feel free to jump in if any of these speak to you or don't. One of the things that we talked about was the connections to nature. And so I've got a photo here of our rooftop terrace at Waltham High School. And so this is something where, again, it can be glazing and views that create that connection to nature, but it can also be a direct physical connection. So that's something that we can explore moving forward. Another image here is comfort, comfort and well-being focused. So, you know, this isn't just about lighting and thermal comfort or healthy materials, but it can also be tied directly to the educational plan. So an example here is a health assisting program at Waltham High School. So obviously, you know, lighting, healthy materials, all of that was a part of it, but it can really drive into the educational programming as well. celebrating diversity. There are so many different ways that you can do this and obviously we'll fine tune this so that way it's Medford specific. What we're showing here is again Waltham High School and this tile mosaic is a direct result of student surveys and they wanted to showcase fabric patterns from the various sculptures that were represented by the student body. And so that was a way that we were able to celebrate diversity in a physical representation in that school. And then showing also adaptable and flexible spaces. We've talked about that today. You know, again, this can mean many things. What I'm showing here is an example of a new educational program to Waltham High School. This is their environmental science lab. And here, really, it was about providing them flexibility as the program grew. So, you know, durable materials, but flexible space as well. So we're seeing the lab space with power cord reels from the ceiling, so that way you can move the furniture around, access right next to it with a classroom, also access to the green roof right outside. So taking all of that into consideration. And then on this slide, a couple more precedent images here. We've talked about honoring history, but also embracing the future. So again, many ways that this could be done. It could be done with graphics, which we'll talk about a little bit. It could be done with salvaged items from the existing site or historical artifacts that are important to Medford. So many opportunities there. Intuitive wayfinding and placemaking. This is definitely, especially for a large school, really critical. Good space planning is important, but we want to make it as easy as possible to know where you're at in the building and also get to your next destination, get from point A to point B. Equitable and universal design. Code compliant accessibility is obviously a given. Um, but we also can consider thoughtful ways to make the building, um, as friendly as possible to everyone. Uh, this can be done, uh, in a lot of different ways we're showing here. Um, one way that's also you're. You're showcasing where you're at, but it's also, um, can be educational. So we're showing the arts and both, uh, enlarged Braille as well, um, as ASL, um, Access to daylight, obviously critical as we move forward with our space planning, particularly for art spaces or visual arts. And really, it all boils down to things being durable and timeless. So, you know, again, avoiding training materials and products. And, you know, we can talk a little bit more about the interior materials on the next slides.
[Matt Rice]: Yeah, and Sarah, I'm going to actually say that we're going to pause just a second here. Just to take a second and talk through any of those topics. Yeah, we're, we're going to run out of time here. I think pretty quickly. I want to make sure we can talk to environmental graphics quickly as well. Thoughts though, maybe about what we've shown here in terms of some of these interior material guiding principles.
[Andre Leroux]: I really liked the health assistant. It's just that that flooring really kind of like guides you, but what the separate areas are.
[SPEAKER_27]: Yeah. Again, subtle wayfinding, right. And just kind of really diving into the, you know, how much that, that, that pattern can help with the flow of the space. Um, and yeah, I mean, it's a wonderful program and really the space just is kind of the cherry on top to that.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Yeah.
[Unidentified]: Well, I just wanted to say sort of jumping off what you said at the beginning about doing more with less and not having anything decorative without purpose. So I'm looking at some of these slides and the celebrating diversity is absolutely beautiful. And there was one on the next page, the hallway in the top left. They're beautiful, but I'm thinking of students with visual impairments in particular, and with a lot of different colors and a lot of different patterns, so forth, coming in and feeling sensory overload from just a visual perspective. And so I'm just being mindful. And then going back to the slide again, the one, the celebrating diversity. I'm looking at those colors and they're gorgeous, but I'm also looking at those white tables and how they blended with the floor. And you're distracted by all the color above you. That's sort of the perspective I'm coming from in terms of making it accessible. Um, that's, that's, you know, sort of, and it ties in with the weight mining and the, and the, the same with the floor, you know, making it sort of intuitive. So that's one thing that jumped out at me, um, kind of keeping that in mind.
[SPEAKER_27]: For sure. No, that's great feedback. And definitely, I think finding that balance, right. Of, um, you know, making things. comfortable for everybody, right? And to your point, being intentional about where the accent colors are, what the contrast is, and actually making sure that we are achieving that goal.
[Michael Pardek]: Sometimes it's also about how you shape a large space, that there's nooks and little spaces, so you're not in the middle of it all. I know at my daughter's school, when I first walked in there, exactly what you said, it had like, it's a 90s school set, like a checkered board.
[SPEAKER_27]: Very overwhelming pattern.
[Michael Pardek]: It's just like a space that is all visual, like energy everywhere, you know, so it's like trying to sculpt spaces in a way that are proportioned well, lit well, and have the interior palette that supports that it's a pleasant and navigable space. Right. All right.
[SPEAKER_27]: Yeah, we can skip the environmental graphics if you'd like, Matt. And we can come back to it.
[Matt Rice]: I'm just going to let people know that we're skipping over something that is still very important in terms of healthy materials, red list avoidance of materials. We are going to get into a little bit in the next advisory team meeting if you want to stay for that. It gets back to this topic that we're not talking in silos here. We're overlapping consideration of materials. I did want to talk really quickly about experiential graphic design though, Sarah. So if you want to try to get through this material pretty quickly, I'll give us a couple minutes at the end just to wrap up.
[SPEAKER_27]: Yeah, no, I will give the quickest overview. So basically experiential graphics or XGD is all about bringing visual graphic elements into the space. And it goes really hand in hand with the rest of the building design and can exist in a variety of formats. And really the three major questions that we look at all kind of stem from the audiences, right? So there's three major audiences for a school. It's the students, it's the staff and the community. And all of that ties back to, you know, what is the content? Where is it going? You know, can we hide Can we tie content into the programming? Is it located near the gym versus a classroom? And then what does it look like? It also includes what is it made out of and how is it maintained? And then for goals, again, this is something that we've worked with each school for unique project specific goals, but these are ones that we try to achieve in every environment. And it's really about connecting those three audiences, the students, the staff, and the community to the space through a cohesive system. And again, responding to the other design elements, interior, architectural, and the site. And then creating different strategies, again, to encourage educational opportunities, not just inside the classroom, using the building as a teaching tool. And then, you know, first, a critical element is obviously providing clear and functional wayfinding and really cementing those important places throughout the school. And again, these are just some visuals from some recent projects. So a few examples here about connecting the individuals to the space. And we can just kind of flip through these very quickly, Matt, if you'd like. Again, responsive graphic design. So a lot of these are that image for Wakefield. Those are acoustic wall panels. So again, it's providing graphics, but at the same time, helping with the acoustics of the media center. Let's see, the next slide we can talk about. So these are some great examples of creating educational opportunities, again, based on some context. So, you know, we have a graphic in the architectural drafting hallway of Somerville that really highlights the entire plan of the space, and then we've got informational signage for those tile murals that we were talking about to explain what are you really looking at, what are the parts and the pieces, as well as some lead signage as well, just to better understand what the building system is actually doing. And then some examples of wayfinding and placemaking. So from stairwells, knowing which level you're on, the building entrance, site signage, even just welcoming in to the main office, all of those things can be part of XGD. And this is just a quick example of, again, we're looking at everything as a suite. So everything works together. It's all cohesive and has a similar language. And the last slide is basically just a quick process that is really where once there is a building and we start to get a little bit further into design in the next phase, you know, we'll start with surveys to really help inform those project goals and develop the concept and the content.
[Matt Rice]: And this will really be one of maybe like a splinter group that comes out of this and will probably work to try to find some student voice to pull into this because that's it's really critical to making sort of any experiential graphic connected to the school community. I think we've heard that in a variety of ways already. And Suzanne mentioned at the beginning that the student input is just critical and it's been very insightful to date wherever we've been able to make those connections. The other thing I'll just add on to the end of Sarah's piece here is the fact that there's actually a lot of experiential graphic activity and that's already in the building today. Particularly the CTE programs have been very prolific in terms of generating some amazing things that are on the walls, either outside their shop spaces or inside their shop spaces. And what we want to do is try to amplify that, right? There's some great ideas that we've heard also about things that have been done in the past that we can bring back, new things that we can do moving forward. So this will be definitely a comprehensive lens that we'll use for the entirety of the school, not just sort of one particular area of the student body that we're talking to and thinking and working with. So we are pretty much at the end of our time. So I want to take a quick second to go through the next steps in terms of what's coming, including confirmation that We're going to come back together on March 10th in terms of having a subsequent discussion. That will be at 530. We're going to be doing it again as this remote hybrid setup, probably in this room, but we'll confirm that when we get a little bit closer in terms of the timing. The organization of what we'll be doing at that third meeting is that we'll actually be looking at something a lot less interesting than sort of slides with graphics on them. We're going to be going through a spreadsheet. I know that sounds exciting, which has essentially all of the topics that have come out of both the initial session and sort of the dialogue that we've had here as recommendations back to the full building committee. And we're going to categorize those into three different groups. We're going to have some given items and we're going to do sort of a traffic signal analogy on this. So the givens are going to be green light items. We won't need to talk about them at the next meeting, but we'll run through the list to just confirm that they are there as recommendations going back. There's going to be some flashing yellow items as well that we're going to have some discussion about in this meeting when we get together again. And we'll just see where those sort of, they're not pain points or friction points, but things that really there's different perspectives that we want to talk to and make sure that we have a consensus agreement on. And then we may also have some red light items, items that We're not going to be pushing forward as recommendations. So that's what we can look forward to as we move forward into the next meeting. But definitely thank everybody for their time, those that are in person, those that are remote. We know that everyone's time is valuable, especially on the evenings. So appreciate any way that you've been able to join us. Thank you. Thank you. We have some folks in for the next advisory team meeting. So there is no rest.
[Adam Hurtubise]: for us that are multiple. Thank you.
[Matt Rice]: systems and sustainability advisory team will probably take about five minutes. We'll let other people filter in and we're going to get everything set up and then we'll get going right at about 535.
[Adam Hurtubise]: You're on. All righty.
[Matt Rice]: For everybody online and everyone in the room, we're going to get going here with our meeting number two for our Sustainability and MEP Systems Advisory Team meeting. The agenda for today, we're going to do a quick set of introductions again just to remind you who we are and who's speaking. I know we were all remote last time, so being in person, maybe it'll be limited to who we are this time around. If there was anyone that is part of the team that was identified as part of the team but wasn't able to make the first meeting, I do want to give just a couple of minutes to anyone that's in that category to introduce yourself, your connection to the project, and your priorities and goals, similar to what we did with the entire group at the first meeting, just because we want to make sure that we have the ability to hear from everybody. So after we get through that sort of introductory piece, we're going to break the discussion down into a series of chapters of the discussion. And each chapter will really involve a little bit of presentation of material. We're essentially going to be reflecting back what we heard the first time around during the first conversation. And we tried to group similar types of comments or thoughts into these chapters. We won't be talking to you for 45 minutes and then we wait and have a conversation. We're just going to go piece by piece. If we get to the point where we're at our time limit, I'll just have to move us along. So I'll apologize in advance if I need to cut anybody off. But that'll be generally the content of the second meeting. Then we'll talk about next steps as we get to the end. If you were here at the tail end of the last meeting, you've had like a little bit of a spoiler. It's very similar in terms of what we're going to be doing for each of the groups. So real just quick on the introduction side. My name is Matt Rice. I'm an architect with SMMA. Helen, I know, is online with us.
[Unidentified]: Yep. Good evening, everyone. Helen Fantini, project manager with SMMA.
[Matt Rice]: I think Soala is with us as well online.
[Theresa Dupont]: Hi, everyone. Good to see you all. This is Soala Janka, architectural designer at SMMA.
[Matt Rice]: All right. I think we have folks in the room.
[Martine Dion]: I'm Martine Dionne, I'm the Sustainable Design Director at SMMA.
[Emily Ehlers]: Hi, I'm Emily Ehlers, I'm a Mechanical Engineer at SMMA.
[Michael Pardek]: I'm Andrew Barrows, I'm an Electrical Engineer at SMMA.
[Luke Preisner]: I'm Luke Reiser, I'm a member of the Enterprise School.
[Matt Rice]: Sorry, we're just going to keep going through the design team folks. I don't mean to cut you off. No, that's fine. Brenda, you're online too?
[Emily Ehlers]: Yes, hello everyone from the Land Sustainable Design team member.
[Matt Rice]: Okay, I don't think Tomaso is online with us. Is James online?
[Brian Hilliard]: Yes, James Job, Agile Engineering, Plumbing and Fire Protection.
[Matt Rice]: Okay, it's not that I don't want everyone to introduce yourselves again, I just want to try to conserve as much time as possible. This is everyone on the Medford team. Again, is there anyone that was not with us for the first meeting that didn't get a chance to introduce themselves and sort of their goals online or in the room? Libby, do you want to go ahead?
[Maria D'Orsi]: Hi, I'm Libby Brown. I'm an architect and parent. I'm on the School Building Committee. And I saw the list of goals that were summarized last time. They look great. I don't really have anything specific to add. But I also had James. He was my engineer, UMass Law only. So hi, James. Nice to see you again.
[SPEAKER_12]: Hi, how are you? Hi, Sarah Michaelman. I'm online. I'm sorry I can't be there with you in person. I unfortunately missed the last meeting. So I'm a community member. I've lived in Medford for 22 years. My daughter went all the way through the Medford school system starting in kindergarten. She's long out of the system now. My son is about to graduate from the high school. And I agree with Libby. I did watch the video of the last meeting. You guys covered a lot of ground in terms of goals for the project. I agree with all of them. Oh, so my background and why I'm here. I am a sustainable design consultant by trade. I work with a firm out in West Concord. and have worked on a lot of MSBA school projects over the years as a consultant working with the architects. Just one thing I do want to add is I'd love to see this building be resilient and potentially a community resource should there be any catastrophic events where people need shelter, vaccines, water or food, that it could be a resource for that and along those same lines have that kind of passive survivability and be able to maintain comfortable temperatures and things should there be an electrical outage, et cetera, if it's used as a shelter. One thing I wanted to add.
[Matt Rice]: Thank you so much. That is great. And I realize that we had not gotten into that whole notion of shelter usage and shelter designation is something that we need to, something that we'll have connected conversations with the first responders as well. in terms of understanding sort of what the city's perspective is from those departments. But we can definitely wrap in what that means from a resiliency standpoint as well. So I appreciate that. Thank you. Just really quick on our schedule again, we are still... Emily's doing some extra recording for us.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Sorry, I thought I found it.
[Matt Rice]: Fall 2030 is our target school opening date at the moment. We are very much not quite there yet. We're at the beginning of this feasibility study process where we are right now. We do have these touch points of advisory team meetings. This second one that we're going to have is the last one in the first part of the feasibility study. And we're just getting into sort of the semantics of the MSBA process. Understand that we're going to get together two more times after this as an advisory team with each category that we're looking at. And again, the fact that this is not an isolated conversation, it's not a silo conversation. We do have these four different teams that are meeting to talk on these particular topics. There are overlaps that's inherent and intended and beneficial to the process as we go through. But at the end of the day, from these advisory teams, there will be a series of recommendations that we're going to be sharing back to the full building committee. They will have the ability to accept or not accept those recommendations, but this is the process in terms of collecting expertise and input really from experts within the community on these particular topics. very quick refresher on the objective, the topic of what we're going to be talking through. But I think this one is very self-explanatory in terms of the title of the advisory team. And then we're going to jump right into topics and priorities. I'm going to hand it over here to Martina to start off.
[Martine Dion]: So we're going to browse through Some of these, we've got it all there, but I'm not going to name them one by one. But the last meeting we went through the givens, you know, the specialized code, the MSBA requirements, etc. And then the Medford, some of the Medford sustainability policy and guidelines. And then we got a good amount of your great feedback and discussion points. at that meeting. And what we did, we organized them. There was one particular comment about understanding what LEAD is and giving a LEAD overview. So we'll do that briefly, and we'll have a bit of a discussion around that. This is not to go through the whole LEAD set of criteria, but you will see that throughout the topics we're going to go through, some of those are going to fall within the within the following discussions. Climate resiliency, so we sort of bundled in there, obviously energy efficiency. We're going to talk about mechanical, electrical, plumbing systems. Operations and maintenance was something that was near and dear to some of you. We're going to brush a bit on passive design strategies. And Sarah, thank you for bringing that up because that's something that's going to be part of the project in terms of resiliency. And then renewable energy, EV charging. There was another set of comments around embodied carbon. So we're going to talk, we're going to spend a bit of time talking about this today. Healthfulness, environmental quality and literacy, and environmental literacy. That was sort of bundled, sort of the ventilation, daylight, and everything that has to do with connectivity to nature and sustainable sites. And then there were some comments about cost effectiveness. So we wanted to make sure that we're going to give you an overview of some of the life cycle cost analysis that we're going to be providing in schematic design. And it's required by MSBA, but we're going to give you some example of what it entails.
[Matt Rice]: This particular topic is fraught with acronyms. So LCCA down there at the bottom is life cycle cost analysis. We'll try to make sure that we explain those as we go through for folks listening in now or after.
[Martine Dion]: Right. So LEED, just to respond a bit to a comment from the last time. Leadership on Energy and Environmental Design is what this acronym stands for. It's a green building standard that was developed in the mid to late 1990s. And it was fully launched commercially in the early 2000. MSBA adopted it in the late 2000. as a requirement for designing schools in Massachusetts and getting reimbursement for MSBA. The green building certification system is in its fifth version. So your building will be registered under V5, which is a bit of an overhaul over the previous version. We're not going to go into that. But basically the way this comprehensive green building certification is set is into these categories that you see there. And many of your comments from last meeting sort of fall into the criteria. Each of these categories have a set of criteria. And MSBA requires a minimum of silver certification. So we're going to have to apply all the prerequisites and a good amount of the criteria from each of these categories. As we go through and talk about the different topics tonight, we're going to highlight which of those are already included in the LEED certification that you will have the product has to pursue. Version 5 has sort of rebalanced a bit the sort of the weighing of the criteria within the system. They put, obviously you can see there, decarbonization is a big component of it, quality of life, and then ecological conservation and restoration. Those are the sort of big chunks of the re-weighing that they've done in the B5. So this is what the scorecard, we're not going to go through this point by point, but you're going to see this throughout the process of the design process. There's a scorecard, which each of those categories that you saw on the previous slide has a set of criteria, and we need to design to that criteria. We're going to present to you updates periodically throughout the whole design to show how we're sort of qualifying to meet the silver certification at minimum. Next. So just one very early sort of look at it. In order to get to silver, we need 50 points minimum through this criteria. We did a very preliminary assessment and you know, sort of targeting, we need to target more than 50 to make sure we get 50. And then there's options here to go either gold or platinum, and I know in some other meetings, there may have been some comments about, you know, gold or platinum, and that's not something that we are going to decide for you. We want you to voice your wish, and then we're going to analyze and show you what it takes to get to gold or platinum. That's really, right?
[Matt Rice]: Yeah, so just to clarify that a bit more, so I think we want to be clear about what our sustainability goal and why we are looking for a particular rate. The silver certification through USGPC that's going to get us MSBA funding. So that's a clear goal and a rationale for why we want to do that.
[Martine Dion]: That's a given.
[Matt Rice]: If we're going to gold or platinum, are we interested in just that designation, that recognition that comes from the USGBC? Are we interested in sort of the core sustainability benefits that are behind those ratings and sort of what matters as we move forward in the process? So it's a little bit of a higher level question. But I think it is worth a little bit of discussion as well. And this is the last slide that we have on this section, right? So we can get it there. I know Liz got his hand up.
[Luke Preisner]: So I've reviewed other high school projects throughout the Commonwealth. I know there are designers for Wakefield. They're doing something interesting with the microgrid. Perhaps you could confirm, because these articles are half accurate, right? Did they try to obtain LEED Gold or LEED Platinum? And then did they back off? And what did they back off? I think I got the answers, but it's just based on the news article.
[Martine Dion]: Can I also ask what version of LEED was for? So Wakefield is LEED B4. And the LEED community supported silver minimum. And they had aspiration for gold. And so what happens when we do aspiration is that we sort of build as much as we can towards gold and cement everything we can that would reach gold. But there's not as much. There are some criteria that they're not willing to extend to, whether it's budgetary or for some other reason, maintenance or whatever. And so there was a discussion throughout and we kept track. I think there's still an aspiration for gold, but there's no, there's no final seeing until the building is fully certified. And that won't happen for a couple of years, I think, or a year and a half. Okay. Are they tracking silver?
[Maria D'Orsi]: You said aspirational for, are they tracking silver or are they tracking gold?
[Martine Dion]: We're tracking silver, but with high, high enough points that we were borderline gold territory, but we cannot say where we're tracking.
[Matt Rice]: Which just for reference is exactly what happened in Somerville. Like we tracked silver all the way along. They actually just got their gold certification. It does take a couple of years after the building opens to get it. sometimes in terms of the back and forth that you'd be seeing. But it's not like it's a completely unattainable goal or an approach to the project as you track at it. It's really just trying to manage where we're focusing some of the investment on different scope items, where particular points have just very direct costs associated with them.
[Luke Preisner]: And I brought up Wakefield. because they've also got a very interesting concept. Now, they have a municipal power company that you can partner with, and they're developing microgrid backup. And as I was reading that, I saw a lot of appealing aspects, but we don't have a municipal power company. And so I was wondering whether some of the things Wakefield is doing, because that project is pretty far along, are applicable in terms of storage to Medford.
[Martine Dion]: Oh, no, I thought you meant in terms of lead. So I was going to say no, because it's a separate project and, you know, the PV is not installed at... No, would the battery backup have any influence on... No, because it wasn't part of this project and it's not within the lead boundary.
[Unidentified]: However, in Lexington, which is not a muni, it's a
[Martine Dion]: Massachusetts PA utility. They've committed and required the gold aspiration platinum. So in Lexington, they've committed to it as a community. And they've also committed to net zero energy, full site net zero, well, building net zero energy on site with battery storage. The battery storage, the solar photovoltaic being installed as part of the project does contribute to LEED and LEED points. The battery storage in LEED v4 or less and LEED v5 could have some significant impact in terms of some of the modified and new criteria within LEED v5. But the really major benefit of the battery storage is the participation with the utility in the demand response program in, you know, storing the energy, sending it back in the grid and getting the real sort of the money benefit of that on top of reducing your peak load, which reduces your peak energy cost, which is also significant energy savings. So those are the benefits of the storage. The way we build the setup is very different because they're a mini, so they're going to manage this at the, not at the building level, but at the city level.
[Maria D'Orsi]: Do we know enough about the existing Renford High School to understand when the peak load is happening, to understand when that demand would match up with the solar collection, and whether or not battery is
[Martine Dion]: really an effective use of money. So when we get to the lifecycle cost analysis, I can speak to that a little bit. We've gotten some information. And the nice thing about Medford is you have an energy manager, I think, in town. So we can. She has her hand up now. Oh, she does.
[SPEAKER_06]: Let's let Brenda go.
[Martine Dion]: So basically, we get to high level assuming, yes, we can look at that. We can look at that in collaboration with the energy manager, get that information, and then align with what would be planned.
[SPEAKER_06]: Brenda, do you want to go ahead?
[Brenda Pike]: So what I originally had put my hand up to say was I think that it's important to aspire to platinum as we're starting this process and moving forward. But I would say that I think that net zero and passive house are potentially more valuable goals. So if we are able to achieve those without achieving lead platinum, I don't think that would be the end of the world.
[Matt Rice]: Okay, I'm going to let Paul go and then going to move us along, just because again, I want to make sure that we have time to get to the other topics. I know you feel strongly about this topic, Paul, but go ahead.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just wanted to sort of echo a bit of what Brenda just said. And, you know, I was having an offline conversation with her and Alicia Hunt and, you know, being able to stick a thing on the wall that says what our lead level is, is actually not something that I care about. I care about the full lifecycle costs of operating the building. And so I just wanted to make sure that that was clear. Although I don't, I also care a lot about reimbursement, getting enough points to get extra money back from MSBA. So both of those things, but like I'm not attached to being able to proudly say we're a lead platinum. If we are, that would be great, but let's get there for the right reasons.
[Martine Dion]: So just to clarify, the MSBA reimbursement is tied to the LEED silver. Gold or platinum does not get you more money from MSBA. Meeting the specialized stretch code, which MENFER has already sort of adopted, gets you more money with MSBA. And then there are a specific set of credits and criteria, mostly related to indoor environmental quality and materials, that if we meet a higher level of those, there's a basic level required by MSBA. If we meet a higher level, we get an additional 1%. And we plan to, you know, show you and pursue those that's achievable. And we've been doing so in other projects.
[Matt Rice]: Yeah, so just to clarify, Paul, you may be thinking that in the past, MSBA has handled the reimbursement and the benefits for different levels of LEED certification in different ways, and they will continue to do that as they go forward. They do track along with how the energy codes adapt and modify and get more stringent over time, and they adapt sort of their reimbursement model a bit as you go year by year. Um, so we'll understand once we get to the point of schematic design, sort of what we're locked into in terms of their policy at that point. Um, so we'll just have to continue to track it as we go through. Um, I am going to push us forward. I think that was, that was great discussion and I really do appreciate that point that it's not the plaque on the wall that is really driving this, but it's sort of the benefits, um, from a sustainability perspective, environmental perspective. Um, so we're going to shift to climate resiliency as a topic.
[Martine Dion]: So, you know, we had energy there, but before we get to that, we just want to explain what you're seeing there again is the LEED criteria and part of climate resiliency involves sustainable sites and transportation and water efficiency, water conservation. So those, that criteria is part of LEED. These are givens, transportation demand management. That's something that came up at the last meeting in terms of EV charging station, which we'll talk a bit later in this section, bicycle storage and bicycle charging. So all of this is going to be part, to a certain extent, be included to comply with LEED. For example, the EV charging station for LEED, you need to install 10% under UNB-5. So these are all givens. Next. In terms of energy and atmosphere, we want to spend a bit of time because there was a lot of talk around this last time, and it's a big chunk. Somebody just made a comment about net zero energy. So in terms of LEED, we have to outperform standards that are part of their criteria. And MSBA looks at that performance and associates a certain amount of LEED points they sort of look at that performance to associate lead points for the stretch code, which they're kind of apples and oranges, but that's their way of benchmarking. And so we really try to optimize the energy performance of the building to really meet them as the threshold, but also, you know, make as much points there. The change in Lead B5 is source energy. We won't go into all those details, but it's source energy-based versus site energy-based. All of this is supported by the MA specialized stretch code. So there's a lot from that code that's going to support the criteria there. That said, there's a lot of technical things here, but passive strategies are going to be also a priority, you know, making sure we harvest the free sun. And Emily will talk a bit about that, you know, thinking about wind, at the same time, and then somebody brought up passive survivability, so that will be part of the thinking here in terms of HVAC system and overall resiliency of the site. I won't go through all of this, but to say that commissioning is subsidized by MSBA, so the full commissioning set of mechanical, electrical, plumbing, building enclosure, and actually some ongoing commissioning plan is all included in the MSBE scope and provided by MSBE. And that's it. Is the SBC considering bringing on a commissioning agent in somatic design?
[Maria D'Orsi]: Because that's what they mean by this requirement. So I was curious if that was a consideration.
[Martine Dion]: So I have a question. MSBA doesn't bring it on until DD. So I actually have a question, because MSBA is going to transition to DD. So I have a question to them about that, to first clarify if they're going to substantiate. And if not, then we would have to account for it. We've asked them that question, and they've heard no. You've heard no.
[Maria D'Orsi]: Yeah. OK. But I'd be curious if you had a different answer.
[Matt Rice]: And we keep asking, I think the more people pointing out, they may have an epiphany there that, geez, we need to adjust our policy.
[Martine Dion]: And then the other thing that they do not provide, if you want to, if you install a solar PV system, you need to have it commissioned to get the lead points for the renewable energy. But MSBA does not reimburse that. So you usually have to buy that commission separately. Same with the demand response. There's a part of it that's an observation of a test that needs to be done by a commissioning agent. We also need to buy that up front.
[Matt Rice]: So I'm just going to try to keep us on the questions until Martín gets through this piece of it.
[Martine Dion]: So no, no problem. So a lot of the you'll see a lot of the schools are targeting EUI 25. So make sure I explain what I mean. Energy use intensity. The EUI is a metric that we use to compare schools and buildings, actually all buildings, by using a sort of a nominal energy per square foot per year metric. In this case, we take all the energy loads, whether from fossil fuel or electricity, and we combine them in kBTUs per square foot per year. The target for most schools that are not vocational schools, that are not comprehensive program school, usually is 25. But with the case of your school, which has a comprehensive program, which really requires a bit more energy per square foot than a typical school, we've put a range there of 25 to 35. There's going to be more discussion about that, but we'd like to set that goal up front in the project, and we do energy modeling to sort of monitor and target and continue to sort of profile that goal. And how do we get there? And we've got many schools that have achieved the EUI 25 that are not non-provinces. How do we, can you go back, I just want to go to the nice little icons there. So one of the very important components of how to get there is a super insulated enclosure. All of those things are supported by code, but we want to make sure you understand what it is exactly. Super insulated enclosure, triple glazing, all electric HVAC to the extent possible with your program, and then plug load management, which ties into occupant behavior. And then the passive strategies, which I omitted to talk about first, but they're the first thing we look into. Next. And in terms of operational carbon, so all this energy, we're going to talk about embodied carbon later. All this energy is equivalent in greenhouse gas emission. And your existing high school versus the new school. This is not your school. This is an example. When we fine tune your existing high school energy better, we're going to create a bar chart like this and show you where we're looking to go. What you're seeing here is an existing high school, large existing high school, and how an EUI 2530 target reduces the operational carbon over 60 years. So we take the annual emissions and we multiply them by 60. The reason we do that is that When you do modeling and measuring of embodied carbon, you look at it over 60 years. So this discussion will continue at the next meeting, probably in a bit more detail. But we like to look at carbon as total carbon, both operational and embodied carbon. Next.
[Emily Ehlers]: So like Martin's been saying, when we're designing our spaces, we're not just thinking about what is code required, what the minimums are. We're thinking about a big picture and a lot of variables. So this carries over into the engineering systems as well. And I was glad to hear a lot of these points were mentioned in the first meeting. So that's great to hear that you're all thinking about all these different buckets that we think about during our design process. So specifically for the mechanical systems, I'm thinking about the comfort and health of the occupants, the safety of the materials that I'm using, the LCCA, as Martine's mentioned, both sustainability at the end, hearing teams have to consider this. Reliability and maintenance of the building systems, that's very important. The all electric HVAC systems is a code requirement and a LEED V5 requirement. And then also just the space, not just within the building, but where we're going to place our equipment on the roof, is a sharing space with the PV solar panels. And then where are we going to take up space on the site? So we have to coordinate with the civil teams and the site teams as well. And then I just wanted to point out this one in particular, which was brought up quite a bit in the first meeting. And again, I'm very happy about that because it's one thing to design a high efficiency, beautiful mechanical building system, but it's an entirely another thing to see it operate as intended. So it's very critical from the beginning of the design process to work with who's going to be operating your system. So Andrew and I have already met with Ken and John for their facilities team to understand how they currently operate, what they're comfortable with, and then for their future, what If they'll be bringing on board more team members to handle the larger systems, or they're going to incorporate more training to understand these all electric systems and controls, because it's very different than what's currently in the school. And then, as Martine mentioned, we also look at commissioning as a lead C5 requirement.
[Matt Rice]: So, Audrey, I do see your hand up. We'll circle back to you when we get to the question point in this sort of grouping of slides which will be coming up.
[Emily Ehlers]: Okay, and then a little bit touched on in the first meeting was specifically the mechanical system options. We're going to dive deeper into these later on in the feasibility phase of the project, but I did just want to quickly bring them up high level for what our all electric system options might be for the school. So the first is a ground source heat pump system, that's geothermal system. The next would be an air source to water heat pump system. And then the third would be an all air source heat pump system. And then with these three, we can also kind of do a hybrid option. where you can take bits and pieces of the different system types and use them for different areas of the school. So it could be for cost reasons, to cut costs. It could be just for flexibility, like what might work well in one space might not work as well in another space of the school. So again, we'll be looking at this more closely in the next phase of the design process. But I did just want to put these up here so you can see what's coming.
[Michael Pardek]: Well, it seems like the most popular topic is energy savings. And right now, Medford's PV policy is a building that's a gradient of 10,000 square feet, requires PV array on a roof, size to 50% of that roof usable, I should say, or 90% of the top level of a parking structure that's uncovered, which I don't believe will affect Medford High School, but it's an option. Exceptions are unsuitable spaces or structures that can't have, can't support the structure of the solar array, or if the roof is 50% shaded throughout the year. When it comes to stretch code, we have going through the public pathway, you'll have to have 40% of the usable roof covered, which is under what Medford requires. And any buildings that are still using fossil fuels, you'll still have to provide that solar PV array to offset those fossil fuels, such as for the pool heating, culinary kitchens, labs, and such. When it comes to battery storage, It's not necessarily a code requirement, but it does help with the LEED version 5. So it does add points to get you to higher than silver. And then everything else will just be, contributes to LEED V5 and get you to silver, iron, gold throughout the aspirations. And then other options would be for walkway structures or parking structures or PV array locations.
[Luke Preisner]: And if there is a patio or roof, you can have a high canopy there, or onyx vertical wall structures.
[Martine Dion]: So just to quickly clarify, if you do an all-electric fat wind specialized pool, the 40% is readiness. You don't specifically have to install it Whereas if you have fossil fuel, you have to install to offset your fossil fuel. You have to install the amount of PV that offsets your fossil fuel use. We'll dive more in the details of the code in the next meetings in terms of what does that mean for your project. We started looking at ballpark numbers. And so how much of that 50%, for example, of your roof area would the equivalent in terms of the net zero go big, right? So we'll have more of those figures in the next phase of the Resilience Study.
[Matt Rice]: And we had another slide here on EV chargers, but Andrew, I'm going to cut you off just because I get the sense that people would like to talk about some of this a little bit. And we're sort of running short on time. So I think I will pitch it over. I think there was a couple of hands up earlier that we'll get to. I know we have some folks online, then we'll try to circle through.
[Aaron Olapade]: Great, thank you. I have a comment, a question, and a comment. First, I have to leave at 630, so don't take me leaving at any sign of being unhappy with this. Question, how much of the overall budget historically has the MSBC contributed to projects of this scale and percentage? How much would we expect will be offset by their investments?
[Matt Rice]: choosing overall with the project contribution. So it varies per community. The agreed upon reimbursement rate, and I forget what it is off the top of my head, is let's just say it's 50% for right now. I think it's a little bit higher than that. It's a very confusing number though, because it doesn't actually equate to like what their contribution is at the end of the day, because it's 50% say of eligible costs. And there's a whole like 45 minute presentation.
[Aaron Olapade]: Just trying to get a sense for the scale for which reimbursement versus have to fund ourselves. So my comment is I want to register my support for doing lead silver and code minimum. A lot of these systems are very sophisticated between design and maintenance. And a lot of payback is, for lack of a better word, speculative. The data is based on similar situations or not apples to apples to what we're doing. and does not, is not able to accurately predict what is actually available for payback on some of this. So, um, personally, I believe that stick with the simpler approach, tried and true technologies that doesn't so much count on future dollars coming in as it does. What can we afford today? And what can we afford to maintain today and aspiring to gold or silver, I think will distract us from that goal. and lead us more toward cutting-edge technologies that are going to be difficult to maintain or to repair or replace. So that's all I got. Thank you.
[Andre Leroux]: I had a couple of questions. One is the rate, and maybe this is a question for the Energy Manager, I can follow up later, is does Medford High have a specific rate structure that would benefit from dispatching storage On like a regular basis, like as as you guys are going about your your design and your load calculations like are you are you looking at. Okay we're going to assume this much PV during the day, but we're going to offset that with. The battery and select points or we're only going to use the battery for demand response credits with national grid, I wonder if you can tell me like what what is how you. How are you formulating that strategy.
[Martine Dion]: Again that's going to be a discussion, there is a rate. and it's driving the commercial rate. But it's a standard. It's a standard. They raise it every year. So when we do the cost analysis, we put cost escalation in there. We have precedents because we've been doing this for a long time. So we can share that. The use of the battery storage is going to be up to the management, the school, the facilities management. So they can take advantage of that demand response. Those are specific times, especially during the summer. But they can also manage it so that they can hold the storage and then use it when it's peak. Let's say in the winter, they use it at night because assurance peak. So that's going to be up to the the facility management to optimize the use of that energy storage in general. And then on top of that, they can add the incentive programs and benefit further from it.
[Andre Leroux]: And are you assuming that the high school or the city will be the owner of the solar or will you sign a third party PPA with the solar?
[Martine Dion]: That's an excellent comment. Because if you are the owner, you own all the greenhouse gas reduction and get all that revenue. If you rent your roof and your parking to a third party, they're going to get all that money. You're going to get only a reduction. Obviously, there's a contract to be negotiated with them, but what we're seeing for most of them, it's a 20-year contract at a fixed rate. You may not get as much money back than if you own the system. But again, that will be a discussion as we look into these options. That will be a discussion for the community to decide, because only the PV and the battery storage, obviously, add the cost. And there is a payback to be looked at and all that.
[Matt Rice]: So I know there's a couple of hands up here. I want to let Brenda respond. And I want to go back to Audrey, because she did have her hand up in between. Then we'll circle back. I know there's a lot of topics for discussion here going forward. We actually have a lot of other content as well, but we may just pause and spend a little bit more time here because I think it is productive conversation. So Brenda, why don't you go ahead?
[Brenda Pike]: Sure, I was just going to add that there are demand charges for buildings that are this size, commercial buildings that are this size, and the high school is our largest energy user of any of our municipal-owned buildings in the city. So the demand charges are quite expensive for it. So I think that's what will be interesting to see the cost analysis of storage compared to the savings that we would get from the demand response we could do with the batteries.
[SPEAKER_06]: Appreciate that. Audrey, do you want to?
[hsUGO5ihrRw_SPEAKER_22]: Yeah, thank you. I wanted to go back to the HVAC. The HVAC stuff. So I just feel very compelled to speak up about this. I absolutely know the one before. Yeah, so speaking as someone who has been in that building over 25 years, I can say that this is a, huge point of contention, if you will, because, as you all know, the building is old, but the The amount of years of not just me, but obviously every teacher that has had to deal with the uncomfortable conditions in that building is horrendous. Now, I am lucky because I'm in the science wing and that was redone about 11 years ago. However, what's upsetting is that the first few years, they let us have individual control over our rooms, and then that was taken away. then now currently there's something weird and something wrong with the system and they can't seem to control it. It's something weird about the central control. And I'll give you just a personal example. Like my room is set to over 75 right now and I'm like dying in it. And like today was kind of like warmer and I've had to crack my window and it kills me because I know what a waste of energy and Sprung just said that. I know what a waste of energy that is. I just want to make sure that in this new space that whoever's going to be running it, whether it's Buildings and Grounds or whoever, is going to be able to run it. But I would ask and beg that you allow teachers, as professionals, to control their own rooms. Because it's just... it doesn't feel very respectful, right? And then just to trust us that we would not be abusing the system, right? Of like cranking it down or cranking it up or whatever. So I just feel really strongly about that because of all the years of just having such miserable conditions. And then, I mean, that it's just I just wanted to pipe up about that as a voice of an educator who's been in that building all these years.
[Matt Rice]: We appreciate that perspective and I think that's definitely going to be subject of a lot of conversations going forward and certainly central to the design of the mechanical system as Emily gets into it.
[Luke Preisner]: Yeah so I have three comments and then a question for you.
[Matt Rice]: See what people are doing they're just sort of
[Luke Preisner]: Letting all the arrows. So a couple of comments. In our SLI, which is available on the Medford High School website, there is a report that was put together in 2019. Earlier, we saw an EUI target of 2535. The report contains the measured values over maybe a nine-year period. showing what the EUI-4 building is or was. You can see a spike sort of during the COVID years. I personally attribute that to more fans and more air circulation. Maybe it's something else, I don't know. But historically, the number was around 60. And then when COVID happened, it spiked and got a lot higher. The report also contains a breakdown between the contribution from electric sources and from natural gas. That's our fossil fuel. So I encourage everyone who's interested in this topic to read that report to get a good idea of what the current school requires in terms of energy. On the PPA discussion, I panels my roof. When I put them up, the best panels produced 218 watts per panel. Today, that's a lot better. If you were to do the same exercise today, you could get panels that produce 460 watts. And that makes a big difference when you multiply it by many panels. So a PPA versus a purchase system requires cost-benefit analysis. And I certainly would ask for one before making the buy versus rent decision, because I see our electric needs growing. As time goes on, more people buy electric cars. There's not actually that many out there. Maybe we see a higher concentration because of where we live and work. But if you travel outside of the 1995 bubble, there's not many electric cars. However, in the future, that's going to change. Our needs are going to grow. And having a PPA positions you to upgrade. You sacrifice in one area, and you have growth in another. I'm not advocating for one or the other, but I would expect a detailed cost-benefit analysis for the make versus rent decision. That would be able to the school, the children, and taxpayers. Let's see. On the reimbursability topic, it varies widely. And it's, as Matt alluded to, a function of what's reimbursable. So take Revere. Revere is building an enormous school. It's going to cost over $700 billion, according to Boston. Can I say billion? So 3 quarters of a billion dollars, according to Boston. Now, they have a very high reimbursement rate, a rate that we couldn't dream of, but it's around 80%. However, that only applies to reimbursable costs. And so the amount that they're getting reimbursed is not 83% of $700 million. It is 83% of a smaller sum. And altogether, it's probably close to $300 million, reimbursed $700 million. So it really matters about what's reimbursable, what's not, and then the percentage. And currently, our percentage is at 53% for this study. And that will change based on what this project begins to look like and what's reimbursable, what's not. where we score points, where we don't. I think the percentage could change.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Not necessarily.
[Luke Preisner]: It doesn't have to, but I have a lot of examples. I'm just saying, it fluctuates, and it's not uncivil community to community. And I have a lot of reimbursement forms that the MSBA publishes. So anyway, it's going to change a lot. It's not set right now. It's something that we should all pay attention to. Now, to the estimate 18, my question. We saw 57 concepts yesterday, and I know that, you know, we had some sort of initial, I'll say, just impression gathering, but certainly some of the shapes that we saw and some of, I'll say, the aspect ratios, you know, implied me that there are concepts that are not well-suited for things like deployment or potentially other technologies, whereas others are going to have better just inherent attributes. And I wanted to ask if all 57 are going to be sort of assessed for the kind of technologies that we're working at, or will we delay that assessment until we narrow it down? Can you walk us through kind of where this subcommittee merges with, I'll say, the main line to have it sit back. Yeah.
[Matt Rice]: So first, we're at 29 versus 57, which to me, it makes me feel a little bit better. 29 is still a big number, right? What we're going to be doing as we go forward, we're definitely going to add, I think, solar suitability or compact, whatever the terminology that into the overall valuation criteria that the building committee And consequently, I think this advisory team as well, there's sort of a lens to look at the different options as we move forward. In terms of how the overlap of this advisory team's review and the SBC review works, I think we'll have to think through that timeline of exactly sort of what is being reviewed at particular points as we go forward. But we're not going to be reducing probably from that 29 until we're getting into the PSR phase, the next phase of the feasibility study. So we will be getting together again here before we make that reduction down. So there will be the opportunity for this group to actually input on some of those topics, whatever those evaluation criteria are. The evaluation criteria should be set before we get to the PSR phase as we really jump into it. And so I think we can also work to help craft and sort of evaluate whether or not we have all the correct evaluation criteria in that longer list. And again, it's not just solar suitability. It's going to range everything from educational priorities to site amenities to community goals. We're going to come up with what that list is. But there definitely will be overlapping opportunities as we move forward before that 29 group is called to something smaller. Just so people are aware, we're not going to jump from 29 to 1, most likely, in terms of the process. There's going to be sort of a short listing of it, and then we'll try to make a final selection in terms of just what people can expect as part of the process. So I want to push us forward to embodied carbon, and I'm going to sort of just tell our team, warn our team, that we'll probably have to take a much more abbreviated view of each of these because we have about 30 minutes left. And some of these are going to be shorter topics, but I know it's definitely challenging to ask everyone to do, but just to try to sort of explain or maybe hit the high points, because I'm sure that people here have thoughts and topics that they want to talk through.
[Martine Dion]: So to be very brief, LEED is going to include a lot of sustainable materials, you know, looking at waste, and there's also a requirement for embodied carbon. So there's a minimum there. What we want to look into and what we're going to continue to look into is to go beyond that minimum as much as it's, you know, feasible. Next. So, you know, when we look at materials, exterior materials, we start looking at embodied carbon impact and a lot of the embodied carbon, next, push again, yeah. A lot of the invited carbon resides in the building enclosure and structures. There's a focus there, but that's not to say that we're not going to look at other material. For example, ceiling tiles and gypsum is pretty high carbon as well, so we look into that. Next. So low-carbon concrete, structural steel with high cycle content. low carbon material insulation, gypsum ceilings, and others. And the one other thing that's going to be discussed is, you know, the consideration that we're curious to understand from you, if you're interested in considering mass timber and wood structural component, whether it's a full structure or a hybrid approach, which is something we can look into. But mass timber obviously has an impact on reducing carbon.
[Matt Rice]: That's it.
[Martine Dion]: We can pause and get your input from there.
[Matt Rice]: And just to add a little bit of sort of more specific commentary on the building. So we have had some initial discussions with our structural engineer. Understanding that we have about a 15 foot by 15 foot structural grid at work in this building where we have the concrete frame portions of the building. That structural grid dimension actually works pretty well with a mass timber structure. If we're thinking about expanding horizontally or even if we're thinking about expanding vertically on this existing concrete structure and not all the building is concrete structure, there are portions that are steel-framed like the vocational wing, like the gym, like the pool. It's already a little bit of a hybrid structural system that we have. But there is some inherent compatibility between the timber frame and then the concrete frame as it exists today, just for what that's worth.
[Martine Dion]: Part of the discussion will be around, you know, wood structure will be to look at, you know, the appetite for the full new components or hybrid option. And we're, you know, curious to know what sort of where this group falls in terms of interest for that.
[Andre Leroux]: sort of viewing that in the broader context of the schedule and the budget, right? And if timber framing, I don't know sort of one versus the other, but if that's going to add cost, where would you recommend that we sacrifice that cost from say somewhere else based on prior our experience, I think, seeing, you know, everything's going to have a trade-off, right, as you're working through it, so.
[Matt Rice]: And I think this group is also about sort of establishing some of those priorities and talking about sort of where, from a larger community perspective, because we have a lot of really great voices as part of this group, just to understand, and it may be different for different perspectives and roles or responsibilities within the city as well.
[Unidentified]: Many of you should definitely look at a hybrid system. I would imagine we won't end up with a full mass timber system, just for various reasons. But we're in the woods, not just for the carbon footprint, but for the we-don't-miss-that-excitement. So we should definitely study. We'll see how it comes out in terms of the budget.
[SPEAKER_12]: Using mass timber also allows for less use of other materials, like you can have exposed ceilings and things. So there's the trade-off there.
[Martine Dion]: And exposed wood has been shown to, you know, ties to biophilia. There's a new healthfulness connection to it too.
[Luke Preisner]: So I don't know very much about it, but in terms of typical facility volumes that utilize mass timber, is there any limit on the size of the structure? or is there kind of like a do not exceed size for dealing with wood? And I'm thinking about, you know, it's kind of inferior mechanical properties relative to metal. And so like spans or something, you gotta think about stiffness and all that. So I wonder, are there like some limitations on how big, from yesterday, I have an understanding that this is gonna be a very large structure. And so if you could provide some commentary on applicability of timber on a very, very large structure.
[Matt Rice]: That's probably larger than what we have today. Yeah, so I think there's two ways to think about it. One is sort of what I was alluding to previously in terms of the structural grid dimensions that exist and sort of what timber can do in terms of traditional spans without getting too deep, right? Because we're thinking about a renovation of this existing building with a 12 foot 10 floor to floor height. dropping significant depths in terms of any type of structural frame is going to limit our ceiling heights and impact our indoor environment in terms of probably in a detrimental way in terms of making it feel very compressed. But from like a how big can we go with the mass chamber from an overall building standpoint, I think that's really driven more by building code. It's going to be like the limitation that gets put on that. And that's true for any type of structural system. gets classified into a particular construction type and we're allowed overall height limitations and horizontal distance limitations. It's not to say that we can't separate the building using firewalls and other things to sort of extend the realistic extent of how far we can go with it. It's really just being able to work through the constraints of the building code more than anything in terms of understanding how much we can do.
[Luke Preisner]: And is there like an additional burden for fire prevention and sprinklers and things like that relative to a concrete level structure or is it equivalent?
[Matt Rice]: So there definitely is a connection in terms of the relative fire resistance of any structural system and how far we can go before we have to separate the building or how high we can go before we separate the building. The way that mass timber works is that it chars the structural or the building code assumes that it chars on the outside before it completely fails in terms of a structure, right? And so it's accounting for when they give us the area limitations and the height limitations, like the time involved in terms of fire tests and what it's been proven to. Sprinkler systems will increase those limitations in terms of what we can build to. Again, whether it's concrete or whether it's steel or whether it's wood of any type. So all those things work together in terms of driving sort of what each structural system might allow us to do, but definitely is connected into things like fire protection systems and fireproofing of the actual structural members themselves as well, whether that's like applying something to them, whether it's a mess encoding or spray fireproofing, or sort of wrapping the members with another type of material that's fire resistant, like a drywall or gypsum board. So it's a lot of sort of complex interrelationships from a building code perspective in terms of dictating what those restrictions are.
[Luke Preisner]: This school was built because the priory school burned down.
[Matt Rice]: Concrete from a fire resistance standpoint is a wonderful material. It will not burn. And you can build as far as you want to and as high as you want to really without limitations is what the code tells us. And that's sort of how that equates to its fire resistance. So yes. We'll certainly, well, one of the reasons why this was built out of concrete primarily, but we do have some steel, right, in terms of those longer span spaces. All right. Last comment. We can always come back to it too. All right.
[Martine Dion]: So let's start real quick. So, you know, last meeting, There was obviously comments around daylight, obviously, maybe challenging or limited in this current structure. The new design will definitely optimize access to views and daylight to the majority of the classrooms, programs based on possible, whether it's side or you know, in some places will have top light, you know. And then air quality was another. So, you know, there's going to be more talk about this ventilation, obviously, ventilation quality. Just quickly, LEED has a set of criteria that brings high environmental, high indoor air quality. So all of those will be part of the project. And then occupant experience in terms of interior lighting, acoustical, thermal comfort, all of those are also inherent in LEED, but that's not to say that there's going to be a set of discussion in criteria beyond LEED that's going to be brought up as part of the design of the project. Operable windows, for example, passive survival that was mentioned earlier on, there's potential to look into mixed mode in terms of using outdoor air when possible and natural ventilation when possible, et cetera. And then the construction in the air quality practice. So there's a whole set of lead that looks at the construction practices and sort of requires a set of practices that is going to sort of help indoor air quality, so cleaning and flush out. Flush out is big. They actually, yeah, flush out is big. And then there's testing. And then healthfulness beyond LEED. LEED requires redness materials. There's a minimum. We're currently applying redness material to a very high level in other projects, and so we're Looking forward to share that expertise and those opportunities and that doesn't mean the fellow about the cost is gone, but it doesn't mean it's going to cost more. It's about vetting the right materials. Biophilia, the flush out, and then there's a whole component of healthfulness that's tied into the site and so the site discussions are going to address this. We're not going to go in detail about this today, but they're very much into looking at the major opportunities offered with the proximity of the bells and sort of the landscape around. And then environmental literacy, you know, we talked about Aldo La Plata a bit. that was brought up as well. Green vegetative roots was something that was brought up that we'll talk about. And then we usually do a quite extensive set of signage, which sort of combines all of the sustainability criteria throughout the school and combines it with sort of a set of imagery and language that can support the educational program. In this project, you also have the great opportunity of your vocational program, which can be tied even more closely to sustainable design, whether it's certain things that they will do within their program, or whether it's interacting with some of the building components. For example, the culinary, can include a portion of the kitchen that's all electric, because that's where commercial kitchens are going. The automotive can look into electric cars, right? And things can be set up for it. So those discussions are going to come through as we progress through the design.
[Matt Rice]: Yeah, just with those two items, actually, in particular. So the culinary arts folks are probably happy with doing fully electric kitchen already. That will not be sort of a hill that we have to climb. And certainly the automotive technology folks are asking us to plan for electric vehicle stations. So they're very much on board here, I think, from a safety perspective in terms of where we're thinking.
[Michael Pardek]: I thought they just got a grant or something, a program to bring some equipment in just to be able to service electric cars.
[Matt Rice]: They have. There's a little bit of a spatial backup right now in terms of how many bays that they have to work with and what they can do. Definitely, as we're planning, we're thinking of a specific base for EVs.
[Martine Dion]: The kitchen is a big deal because it ties into the code and the fossil. So if we can eliminate the gas cooking in the teaching kitchen and in the main kitchen, then we're eliminating that PV requirement, that electrification requirement. So that's great.
[Matt Rice]: And actually, the main kitchen as well, all electric is going to be perfectly fine. So Sonja, you had your hand up, and I'm also going to just note that we're happy to have Sonja here because of HMFH's work that they've done with red list materials through the MSBA. There's a wealth of knowledge that we're definitely going to tap into.
[Maria D'Orsi]: Yeah, I think that's good. I mean, red list materials are things that we can do on any project without additional costs.
[Martine Dion]: There are a few particular components within buildings that do cost a little bit more, but it's in our brain.
[Maria D'Orsi]: I'm curious, and maybe it's because of my knowledge about this, if there's confusion around all-electric gas, because the option specialized doesn't require you to be all-electric. You do have hybrid options, right? However, LEED Me5, right? There's an electrification requirement for LEED Me5.
[Martine Dion]: It's a credit.
[Maria D'Orsi]: It's not a pre-req? It's not a pre-req. So that was my confusion, just wanted to make sure. He's gone. I don't remember everyone's names, but just to his point, I do want to acknowledge that that is a system option and that if we don't study it, I'm not certain we're showing people we've done our due diligence. I think it's important for all residents or all Medford residents to understand that you have studied it and it doesn't pass out. I know it won't, but sometimes it does. And I think that's important for people to look at. I know that if you use gas, you have to put it on the roof. We should be putting it on the roof anyway, because that's what Medford requires. And just because we're a school doesn't mean you shouldn't comply with that. But I think that's important to acknowledge and bringing all community members along. I think we have a pretty varied population here in Medford.
[Martine Dion]: And I think it's important that when we go to vote for this, we show that we've done that diligently. So what you're suggesting is that on top of the all-electric options, and you look at a natural gas option, which we have done in other projects, and we can certainly do that.
[Maria D'Orsi]: Yeah, I do. I don't prefer that, and I think we should go ground-source heat pumps all the way. It's going to be the most efficient. It will have the better payback, if it's viable. That's my personal viewpoint on that. I think that's the way to go. I think we should figure that out, whether or not there's an additional system, because ground-source isn't always the most efficient for all of the things that you're doing inside these buildings.
[Martine Dion]: So the one thing I want to say is when we look at that, because of the specialized food, the cost of the natural grass is going to have to improve the solar photovoltaic.
[Jenny Graham]: Absolutely.
[Martine Dion]: I totally agree. Whereas the all electric one. So it's going to have to be a real comparison. So everybody understand what's implied into choosing the fossil fuel versus the all electric. That's part of the story.
[Maria D'Orsi]: And sometimes the added cost of solar sort of brings that up in cost so that it looks like a better, not maybe better comparison, but it's more similar comparison to ground source heat pumps or air source heat pumps. I'm glad to see we're not studying BRF. I'm not a fan of that. And I think it's great for a school not to consider that at all. I know that that's, I don't know if mass save incentives are changing at all, but it'd be really good to understand where the heat pump adders are in terms of our reimbursement separate from MSBA.
[Martine Dion]: So when we get into the LCCA, I can explain that. It's too bad he had to leave, but hopefully he'll watch the record of it because we're going to talk about this. Yeah, absolutely. The incentives are something we need to make sure that we pursue upfront. And we should be, we'll probably be connecting with them towards the end of feasibility or right at the beginning of SDI. There needs to be a connection soon.
[Maria D'Orsi]: That's right. I do also think there have been a couple of comments about the passive house. Passive house certification. There was an excellent webinar on that through B plus the other day, which is architect's jargon for extra learning credits. And so anyway. And I think that should, we should talk about this here as like a serious topic, because I think there are a lot of soft costs added to that that will make it, that are pretty significant, that I'm not sure people really understand, although like in terms of energy modeling, you were the expert on that team. But I know that that versus Teddy can be tricky in trying to convey what that means to everyone.
[Martine Dion]: Yeah, the school is over 0.5 CFM per square foot, so we can curb our own Teddy. Okay, well, that's good to know. But we absolutely can, because we've done that, we have an idea of some of the cost of passive out, so we can bring that in as an item, because it was brought up, and so we took notes, and we can certainly do that. But to your point about the 157 options, 29, just 29. Oh, that's what it was.
[SPEAKER_05]: Some of them were grayed out. Well, I think that's important. Like you've done a lot of research to narrow that down already. I think that's great. But if we're going passive house, they require you to analyze the envelope, right? And to your point about understanding whether or not
[Maria D'Orsi]: One building is better than the other, like envelope area is a big one, right? And we know that Paxipas looks at that. So I know we haven't narrowed down the criteria for what, like how we're going to add these like MVP sustainability things to help narrow that down. But I think like trying to figure out where this is going for those particular goals, I think there's a huge difference between a goal and a strategy, right? We're here to set goals. You're here to give us strategies. And so we want to be able to be effective in setting those goals. And so trying to understand what that means here, I think, is really important.
[Martine Dion]: Yep. Thank you. I do think that's great. And that's great to hear your feedback on that, because you look like that. you know, we'll take that back. And I think your comment about passive house is well taken.
[Matt Rice]: Yeah, I think there's another level to it as well in terms of the soft costs that are associated, right? There's one thing to design passive house with passive house strategies, right? So that we minimize loss through the envelope and we sort of try to minimize the amount of ventilation that we're going to be having to expend energy on versus actually going for a certification and paying sort of for the third party oversight, registration, those types of things. So we probably need to make that decision as well, or a recommendation for that decision as we go forward. But we can start to get a little bit of a sense of what the soft costs are as well, on top of like the capital costs that would actually go into the building.
[Andre Leroux]: I think there's a good broader point that was mentioned earlier as well that, you know, the sign on the building is nice. It's something that the community can sort of hold up. But at the end of the day, that might be nice for the ribbon cutting. But at the end of the day, the utility costs are going to be what they are. And some of these other, as we're thinking about what's the payback on the structure, well, there's been a lot of money spent to get that certification just for the sake of getting the certification. It doesn't, I don't know.
[Unidentified]: It's not like it's designed better. It's designed to happen.
[Andre Leroux]: Yeah, that's right. Design it to what the certification says and commission it. But then if we don't go forward with the certification, the students are still getting the positive value, and the educators are still getting the positive value. From the efficiency that we have.
[Maria D'Orsi]: And the taxpayers.
[Luke Preisner]: And as an undergraduate president, it's easy to understand cost-benefit analyses for a lot of decisions. Because one thing that we can't escape is the square footage of what is proposed is enormous. And that's a direct proxy for cost. And regardless of what we do, it's going to be a big number. So now we want to start adding things in. They have to be justified, because they're not going to be aggregated to a big number. They're going to be piling onto an already big number.
[Jessica Parks]: But I think it's also looking at the life cycle costs, because it's also projecting into the future, because it's not just what we're building today. I mean, we can put all these elements in, and it's not what is, you know, yeah, the certifications are nice, but it's what do we put in today when we have costs that are being partially paid for today, and we're getting help being paid for, but we're not going to have help with the operating costs down the line. And I think that's critical to think about, too, is how do we operate this building in the future and what's going to pay for it in the future to operate.
[Maria D'Orsi]: Are there things beyond the need, like, with water that we can look at, and we didn't really talk anything about water consumption.
[Martine Dion]: Yeah, we're cool. So yes, these things we're going to dive more into. I think there's free swim in the mornings. But all these different areas of sustainable design um, coming from your comments and also from lead are gonna be- are gonna be in- in future meetings. They're gonna be looked into in more detail. We just browse through it now because we don't have the time, just like we're browsing.
[Matt Rice]: So we are in a- I'm cognizant of the fact that we have five minutes left. I see that Jenny has her hand up. So I wanna give you just a- a couple minutes, Jenny, and then I just wanna wrap us up at the end. Um, again, I- I think we actually have touched on a lot of what we've gone through, um, with the slides. Right. Hopefully people don't feel like they're missing out.
[Martine Dion]: Just for everyone, for the person that had to go. So the life cycle cost analysis is this 50-year life cycle cost analysis. It's done required by MSBA. And it's not just comparing the systems. It's comparing the whole building, enclosure, electrical, and mechanical. And it's looking at first cost, which is what you're referring to. Installation costs versus first cost, replacement costs throughout those 15 years, so it touches on some operating costs and maintenance costs, on top of energy costs. All of those are combined over 50 years. We put in cost escalation. We also look at upfront incremental costs, comparing the systems, improving the fossil fuel. And we also add on to those potential incentives. I'll leave it to that. We can talk about more at the next meeting, but it's pretty comprehensive and I think it will help the conversation, support the conversation for our systems.
[SPEAKER_06]: Okay, Jenny, go ahead.
[Jenny Graham]: Thanks, Matt. I just wanted to maybe flag a couple of things and thank everyone for their thoughts. There's been some really interesting things discussed. And I'm not an expert in this area, so I definitely am learning a lot. The two things I wanted to flag is that when the school committee commissioned the building committee, they did set forth a goal of LEED B5. So that's not to say the school committee would be completely unwilling to understand what the impact of that was, but that original charge did provide some language about our collective sustainability goals and that being sort of pushed towards the gold standard was important. So I do think we need to continue to consider that as an option so that we can make informed decisions. I am a huge fan of not saying no to things at this early stage, because we don't know enough to say no. We don't want things. And I just want to sort of flag that I'm super supportive of looking at all the options, whether they're ones I particularly like or don't like. And then I think the other thing, Matt, that maybe we can talk about offline is to provide this group and the public in general with some transparency on what it costs in the current environment to heat and electrify this building. It is like The numbers are just shocking like I intuitively know that they're high and they surprise me every time that I hear about them so I and I don't think the sort of general public has any sense of what those numbers are. and they're not particularly easy to find, but I think we can do a better job of helping people understand this current building and what it costs us because I think that's hugely important. And I think the other thing that was sort of on my mind as I was listening to the conversation is how helpful this group will be when we are thinking about criteria by which to make narrowing down kinds of decisions so that we aren't throwing the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak, but instead sort of thinking about the expertise in this room and the people who do this work for a living helping guide us. So I appreciate everyone who's been here. And Matt, we can talk about some of those other things at some point in time and maybe bring those things back to this group.
[Matt Rice]: That's great. Okay, and so to wrap up in a minute, or probably a little less than a minute, again, we're gonna be meeting in March. March 11th is the next date for this advisory team to get together. It's gonna be at 4 p.m. We'll most likely be in this room. I think we're still gonna keep the hybrid format, because this has worked pretty well. In terms of the activity that we're gonna be doing, again, you may have all heard this as you came in towards the end of the last meeting, but for record purposes and those online, we will be, Coming up with a series of line item recommendations and like an Excel document, we're going to be using a traffic signal analogy. We're going to be treating some of these things as given recommendations, things that there's no question or discussion and everyone's in agreement that we'll make a recommendation back to the building committee on. There will be some yellow flashing light items that are going to warrant discussion that will use the time to actually work our way through. And then there may also be some red light options that are just things that are not going to be recommended to be included in the project moving forward. So again, these recommendations, this group is not making decisions on those items. We're going to be forwarding recommendations back to the building committee as a group and it'll be sort of in a line item type of format with these sort of colors associated with them. Luke has one final question and still under passed, not seven o'clock yet, but it may go there.
[Luke Preisner]: Hopefully it's a productive question. So, you know, let's see, we've got a couple of months until March. There are a lot of things that we have not talked about. I appreciate the overview and introduction to a lot of different concepts, some technologies, But there are a lot of things that I've seen at other schools that I think are really good in terms of energy efficiency, in terms of a lot of secondary benefits, well, specific technologies that haven't been brought up. And I understand that we're tied on time. We have an hour and a half, and there's a lot to get through. And we always ask questions, and so we slur these out. There's only so much credit to the hour and a half. Prior to this meeting, where we're going to be stoplighting or traffic coloring different ideas, preferences, I was wondering, should we expect any lead-aheads, or should we expect any solicitations where we can suggest some technologies to consider as part of the stoplighting activity? The one that I'll just make a plug for that I really like, If we have a tall vertical structure, and we have a lot of different shapes to work through, and it may not be tall vertical, but if it is tall vertical, are there ways to harness just the natural wind? We're already pretty high up. We're probably like 100 feet up. So there's some of that to tap into for energy savings. And light wells that Arlington did really, really well. I walked through there when they had the open house in the community and thought that the effect was really great. And it varies as you go through the elevation. But it was really great in the library. But it was also really effective at bringing daylight into a large volume that If it were closed, you'd be spending money to illuminate, right? So schools held during the day, let's not call it a little bit of sunshine. We happen to be pretty high up, and there's really not a lot of tree obscuration. So, you know, I want to make a plug for quite a while.
[Matt Rice]: So I think with those types of things, I think, yes, we'll find a mechanism probably through the whole building committee that people can bring up ideas. We have that connection to the committee as well. So maybe we can work with you just as sort of being a conduit to sort of bring some of those ideas in and include them in the list for consideration.
[Maria D'Orsi]: Can I just ask you a question about that, just for everyone to think of, like, those are really great strategies for achieving a goal, right? So those light wells, the goal is daylight autonomy. So maybe that's something that we discuss here as a goal, so that they can start to consider things like light wells or the wind, like the purpose of that is Zero energy?
[Luke Preisner]: Times your enemy, though. Because in June, you have to have a horse.
[Maria D'Orsi]: But you have to have goals before you can develop strategies. So I think we don't want to put the cart before the horse in this sense, right? So I think those are excellent strategies. And I do think we should keep them as means for us achieving goals. But understanding what the actual goal is, I think, is our task. And then you get to decide what the strategies are.
[Luke Preisner]: I don't think our agenda, like meeting agendas, just being devil's advocate, I'm not being argumentative, but from what I've seen, you know, with our prepared agendas, we're not on a path to develop a course. In time for when a preferred design is being sort of presented to the NSPA, we would have to potentially change approach.
[Matt Rice]: I mean, the recommended approach, design approach is going to be at schematic design when that final package goes in, which is not till 2027. I agree.
[Luke Preisner]: OK. I thought we had a June, July deadline.
[Matt Rice]: That's a preferred schematic report, but it's going to be at still a higher level where we do want to identify. Oh, all right. So we actually lost track. Yes.
[Martine Dion]: There's more plot for this level. There will be top lining because our schools are top lining. But to me, SUNY's point, you know, is there a specific goal for it? You know, that's something that we want to hear.
[Luke Preisner]: I thought we had a much shorter response.
[Martine Dion]: What you're seeing in those 29 options is high level massing. A lot of the design is not in there yet. Right. But that's not to say that all of those items that you feel near and dear for, they need to be brought up now. They can be integrated. I think that was the end of feasibility into schematic design, but it's best to bring some of those now on the scene.
[Matt Rice]: I'm going to cut us off because we are five minutes over, and we certainly appreciate anyone that has hung out with us, but I do want to respect people's time. Thank you. This was a wonderful discussion, and I really do appreciate the level understanding and feedback that we've been able to get from this group that's just really invaluable in terms of the process. So thank you.
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