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2025 Nominees

Project Name

Aspire Trade High School

Description

Aspire Trade High School is the only charter model of its kind in the State of North Carolina featuring “hands-on” trade labs. One of the primary goals for the building was to design and build an innovative state of the art education facility that also reduced energy and operational costs over the lifetime of the building. Building with concrete and Insulated Concrete Forms from Nudura helped them achieve these energy efficiency and cost-saving goals. Nudura was involved throughout the build to ensure proper installation that would guarantee the long-lasting sustainability and durability of the school.

Using ICFs for the exterior load bearing walls enabled a tight building envelope that significantly reduces air leakage compared to other construction methods. Combined with their disaster resilience, enhanced sound attenuation and speed of construction, ICFs were the perfect fit for this educational building. Delays in construction due to the Covid 19 pandemic resulted in winter installation of the ICFs, which proved not to be a problem and kept the project on schedule.

The school’s unique design with its asymmetric angled tall ICF walls extending from the interior to the exterior and spanning two stories at the entry, created an open atrium area that was both contemporary and welcoming. The spacious halls and color-coded rooms were designed for hands-on learning, with large trade labs on the south side of the building and classrooms and breakout rooms on the north side. On the second floor, viewing gallery windows were incorporated to overlook the trade labs on the lower ground floor to reinforce the trade learning focus for the school.

Evidence

As the first school in the area to be built with Insulated Concrete Forms and their unique approach to education, there were a lot of eyes on this project. It ultimately set the benchmark for other schools in the area and was 2nd Runner Up in the 2024 ICF Builder Awards Education category. The Executive Director of the Aspire Carolinas Foundation, Jennifer Nichols, was so pleased with the final outcome of the project and the support offered by Nudura and its distributor, Concrete Supply, that she committed to building the next campus building with Nudura Insulated Concrete Forms as well. You can hear from the project stakeholders about the school in this video: https://youtu.be/9-rgpBeiiEU?si=6e_t5acOWvNQ8uuS

Images

© 2022 by NRMCA

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