Nottawa Elementary School was considered to be a replacement school situated on a new 18-acre rural site on the outskirts of the Town of Nottawa, Ontario. With a gross floor area of 32,500 sq. ft. it houses 1 Kindergarten, 8 Classrooms, 1 Lunch/Computer Room, a 3,875 sq. ft. Gymnasium and a 2,700 sq. ft. Library, Staff Room and 1,700 sq. ft. Administration Area.
The floor plan organizes community shared facilities such as the Library Resource Centre, General Purpose Room and Staff room around a central foyer providing secure zoning from teaching spaces for after hours use and convenient access to the front door and parking area.
The circular central Foyer, rimmed with clerestorey windows, brings natural light into the interior of the school and with it’s sculptural bulkheads has provided the canvas for a local artist to create a wonderful mural of local life.
Situated on an unserviced rural site with a high water table and facing strict restrictions from the Ministry of the Environment and the Conservation Authority mandated the provision of a sophisticated sewage system. The computer controlled Sequential Batch Reactor system treats the sewage with a mixture of air and sugar through a series of buried tanks to a distribution bed. This system produces a very high quality effluent and requires a much smaller settling bed. Return lines to a control room in the school allow for constant monitoring of the discharge into the bed.