Kirkwood Johnson County Regional Center
Kirkwood Johnson County Regional Center – Kirkwood Community College, Coralville, Iowa
Kirkwood’s newest regional center was designed in partnership with The University of Iowa and area K-12 districts. This 5 story, 102,000 square foot facility is located on the University of Iowa’s Oakdale Campus and is registered LEED gold. Regional centers provide advanced learning opportunities for high school students, secondary education, and post-secondary training. The facilities lower level contains an automotive lab with 3 car lifts, 100 sqft paint booth, and refinishing room; wood shop; manufacturing lab with 11 weld stations, plasma cutting table, and multiple CNC machines. The upper levels contain teaching classrooms, conference rooms, offices, and labs. The building showcases a main stair atrium which is open from the lower level to the 4th floor.
Heating and Cooling Design
The HVAC for this facility consists of heat pumps connected to a closed loop geothermal system. The building controls modulate airflow from 4 energy recovery units and one 100% outside air unit to maintain building pressurization during occupied times with dynamic exhaust requirements in the lower level teaching manufacturing labs and 4th floor chemistry labs.
Photovoltaic
The building will be equipped with a nearly 100kW Photovoltaic Array to offset a portion of the building energy use but to also be used as an educational piece. The design of the array includes crystalline modules and distributed inverters in the shops below.
Lighting Design
All illumination for the project, both exterior and interior, is done through the use of LED’s. This provides a lower watts/sf number for the facility and cuts back on long term maintenance costs. Lighting controls are through the use of occupancy sensors, manual switches and dimmers in classrooms and a relay panel for public and exterior.
A natural gas driven, 100kW generator is also in place to be used for emergency elevator operation and fire pump operation should utility power be lost.
Download the Project Case Study: 
Kirkwood Johnson County Regional
