Sustainable refurbishment of existing K-12 school buildings and the impacts of sustainable schools on environmental literacy of students

Currently, due to limited energy resources and the corresponding energy problems, designing energy-efficient buildings has increasingly gained importance. In recent years, limited numbers of school buildings have been designed on the basis of sustainability principles. This research emphasises two fields - sustainable architecture and environmental education, and indicates how they are interconnected in the sustainable school building. A literature review has been conducted on sustainable architecture as the first stage of the research, focussed on the refurbishment of existing school buildings, and environmental education. The focus was mostly on environmental awareness of students through the school buildings as the third teacher and a 3D textbook. In this regard, this thesis aims to investigate the refurbishment possibilities of existing K-12 schools in accordance with the criteria of sustainable architecture and the effects of sustainable schools on students' environmental literacy. With this aim, an analysis of sustainable school building examples from around the world, in terms of various sustainability certification systems, was conducted, and refurbished schools were assessed. However, K-12 public schools in Turkey are constructed with 5 standard school types in Turkey, regardless of climate conditions. In this context, these school buildings were examined. Then, daylight-shadow modelling was generated with the ‟DesignBuilder” energy performance simulation software. After establishing the design interventions for K-12 school buildings, values for the heating energy gain of the sample school building were compared using ‟DesignBuilder” building energy performance software and the effect of intervention on the heating energy gain was examined. As a result of this comparison, sustainable refurbishment suggestions were presented. This research will reveal the role of sustainable K-12 school buildings in passing on children's sustainability awareness to individuals of the community and families.