Skanska Celebrates Topping-Out of Douglas MacArthur Elementary School

Skanska has topped out at the Douglas MacArthur Elementary School in Alexandria, Virginia. Representatives from Skanska, Alexandria City Public Schools and Skanska’s construction partners commemorated the event July 27.

When complete, the 150,000-square-foot school will accommodate spaces for classrooms, art and music rooms and physical education. Outside the walls of the school, the site will be home to new turf fields, pedestrian safe drop-off zones and driveways, basketball courts and playground areas. Scheduled to open in 2023, this new environmentally friendly facility will continue to serve students from pre-kindergarten to fifth grade, replacing the former 65,000-square-foot school.

As a net-zero school, the amount of energy that will be produced onsite by renewable sources at the school will match the energy used by the building and its occupants. Some of the notable net-zero design features of the project include:

• Geothermal system: Located under an artificial turf field, the closed loop system utilizes thermal energy to heat or cool the building.
• Photovoltaic panels: An array of panels on the roof efficiently captures light for conversion to energy, reducing the building’s demand for electricity from the grid.
• Passive systems: The building design includes many passive features such as maximizing natural daylight and ventilation from the outdoors and, low- and no-VOC paint, carpets and tile.
• Bathrooms: Instead of gang-style bathrooms typically found in schools, the school will feature individual bathrooms with low-flush toilets and low-water use sinks.

An underground parking garage will maximize the campus’s recreational options and increase its aesthetic appeal with expansive green space surrounding the new building that connects to the wooded areas behind the school. The new facility is designed to provide its elementary school students with a variety of indoor and outdoor play and creativity spaces.

The new school facility will be built to achieve LEED Gold v4 certification from the U.S. Green Building Council.