Passive Ventilation with Louvres from Safetyline Jalousie

St Justin's Oran Park, NSW

ThomsonAdsett Architects were engaged by the Catholic Education Office for Wollongong to design this primary school for the new release suburb of Oran Park in south-western Sydney.

The brief required consideration of sustainability and as such ThomsonAdsett, working with VIM Sustainability, pursued a passive strategy including correct orientation of the buildings, shaded facades, high thermal mass internally, and a layout that allowed good cross ventilation.

Intrinsic to the ventilation strategy was the selection of openable windows. Several options were considered to achieve the required ventilation, including casement, double hung, sliding and louvre windows.

Ultimately it was the large openable area of the louvres, the ease of operability and the low impact on surrounding space that made louvre windows the best option for the project.

There were three main reasons why Safetyline Jalousie louvre windows were chosen:

top hung louvre blades with three sides locked in were important as loose glass louvres have traditionally been perceived as a potential safety issue;
integral security rod provides excellent security particularly for the low level windows;
top-hung (as opposed to centre-pivot) louvres allow slim-fitting internal flyscreens.