Project topic: Cities

Project title: Let`s make public buildings climate friendly!

Team: A School to Chill made by 4D

Hauptplatz 7   Oberschützen   Austria   21 Student’s age: 14-15 years old


Research question

How can we make public buildings like our school more climate friendly?

Summary of the project
Our schools` car parking space

We wanted to know how to use a public building like our school more climate friendly and also prevent the sun heating up the surrounding of our building. First we thought about using grass pavers to limit the heat generated from the asphalt. Our second and current idea is covering our car parking space in order to give shadow to the underground and cars parking below. Additional these car ports` roofs should be containing photovoltaic panels to produce energy which could be used to fuel our teachers` electric cars.

Main results and Conclusions
Temperature depending on ground material

As mentioned above, our first idea was to use grass pavers to limit the heat generated from the asphalt, this however proved to be largely ineffective.
We conducted an experiment* measuring the temperature of the ground, trying to find differences depending on the ground material. We found out that there are only small differences in the temperature of concrete floor and grass pavers, therefore the pavers seem not very effective in decreasing the temperature, whereas they have the advantage of a better water drain.
(*experiment: temperature measurement daily at about 1 pm)

We found out, that the best way would be to cover the parking space to provide some shade for the cars parking below.

In a survey we asked the students in 10 classes about their use of public transport and private car and how often they get picked up by their parents or friends. We found out that – extrapolated to all students and teachers – we would be able to avoid 87,552kg of CO2 from entering the atmosphere every week.

What’s Next? Actions to make a difference and help lessen the problem
How much CO2 we could avoid

The (first) next step will be a meeting with an expert for photovoltaic panels this week, he will explain some ways to build comfortable carports containing panels in their roofs to us. Afterwards we want to show all our ideas to the principal of our school. As our school will be renovated next year, we hope that we can convince her to get at least some photovoltaic panels to finally use the sun as a source for energy. Meanwhile we will try to convince some of our colleagues to use public instead of private ways of transport.

Project poster:

Download project poster PDF

Project presentation

Projects are created by the teams and they take the full responsibility of the shared data.
← All projects