Located in Redwood City, CA, the Veterans Memorial Senior Center will include meeting spaces, a 270-seat theater, a gym, office spaces for local non-profits, an all-electric commercial kitchen, an elevated outdoor deck with community gardens and an exercise track. The building takes advantage of natural breezes, abundant natural light, automatically operated windows and sunshade elements optimize heat gain and loss throughout the year. One of the City’s primary goals is for the building to be capable of providing emergency shelter in the event of a natural disaster to house and feed up to 125 people during major power outages lasting multiple days. IDeAs engineers working at a previous employer developed the electrical design including a PV/battery microgrid that stores powering the building on solar energy during peak demand hours and in the evenings as well as providing emergency and non-emergency power capability. The all electric commercial kitchen can provide up to 400 meals per day including in the event of a power outage.
