Stepping Up to Zero Energy:

Marin Country Day School; With the second phase of its campus plan, a private school on an idyllic site aims for net-zero.

Photo © Michael David Rose: EHDD retained but clarified Marin Country Day’s traditional outdoor circulation, which connects the Learning Resource Center, the focal point of Phase Two of the firm’s campus plan, to other buildings.

Students at Marin Country Day School measure academic progress with their school’s topography. Located in a sharply sloping watershed that descends Ring Mountain to San Francisco Bay just north of the Golden Gate Bridge, the 35-acre campus is organized with the lower school at the lowest elevation and the upper school at the highest. Every academic year concludes with a graduation ceremony, called “Step Up,” during which rows of students sit on a terraced concrete grandstand set into the hillside. One by one, each class is asked to literally step up to a higher tier to signify the students’ advancement to the next grade.

Since its 1956 founding, the private school has treated its connection to the topography and ecosystem of its site as a point of pride and an academic focus. In recent decades, the school—where tuition for a sixth grader can top $25,000 per year—has used that connection, along with complementary emphases on technology and social justice, to attract the affluent, progressive-minded families who call the Bay Area home.

When the school decided to update many of its wood-shingled, cabin-like buildings, the board and planning committee wanted the new structures to edify the place of environmental learning in its curriculum and philosophy. “We have incorporated environmental sustainability into our program and teaching practices for a long time,” says head of schools Lucinda Lee Katz. “But the new buildings allow us to walk our talk.” {read rest}