ABSTRACT
The new Kolla School buildings sit just south of an existing school, which was built in 2000. The construction of the roof assembly provoked much discussion, with the design team striving to satisfy the needs for fire protection, insulation, acoustics, structural strength and minimizing thermal bridges where the walls and roof meet. Eksta Bostads, the housing organization of the Kungsbacka municipality in Sweden, has prioritized sustainability issues for more than a decade, including the construction of buildings that meet the Swedish PH standard. They built their first PH development three multifamily houses with 12 apartments in total in 2006. The municipality, with its strong interest in sustainability, at first considered building using a timber frame but that was cost prohibitive, so the buildings are framed up using steel beams and concrete. The roof of the sports hall is the one exception, using gluelam beams as framing members there.
