Toronto firm wins Passive House competition in New Orleans
Wednesday, May 18, 2011 at 06:23PM 
Low Cost, Low Energy House, by sustainable.TO, is the winner of the DesignByMany challenge. Designed to meet the PassivHaus standard, the roof and sides are covered in Galvalume steel. The building is raised 7 ft. above grade to prevent flood damage.
The Toronto firm sustainable.TO has won a design challenge presented by DesignByMany in association with the American Institute of Architects 2011 convention in New Orleans last week. The challenge, called Passive House for New Orleans, was to provide a design for affordable single-family homes for use in the hurricane-ravaged neighbourhoods of New Orleans.
The winning design, called "Low Cost, Low Energy House," by sustainable.TO, is described as an "incredibly thoughtful and viable response to the goals of this challenge."
Participants were to develop plans for code-compliant houses in the so-called "shotgun" architectural style, but to extend the houses' energy efficiency performance as close as possible to the PassivHaus standard.
In its assessment of the The Low Cost, Low Energy House, DesignByMany praises its minimal impact on the environment, its low energy requirements and its low cost, saying that it will revitalize the neighbourhood where it is intended to be used.
The house achievers Passive House Standard by means of "an airtight, thermal-bridge free and super-insulated envelope combined with passive shading in the summer and solar heat gains in winter; concrete floor topping for thermal mass to temper solar heat gain and to re-radiate the heat into the space as required; daylighting; natural ventilation and cooling; and highly reflective self-ventilating galvalume cladding. Additionally, a balanced energy recovery ventilation system and split-zoned high-efficiency heating and cooling units with an ultra high-efficiency on-demand water heater for domestic hot water and supplemental radiant floor heating reduce primary energy needs.
The challenge for a Passive House for New Orleans is in part a response to the Better Building Initiative of the Obama Administration, which calls for cost-effective new ways to reduce energy consumption. According to the US Energy Information Administration, the building sector consumes more than two-thirds (77%) of all electricity produced in the United States and produces nearly half (46.9%) of CO2 emissions in 2009. By comparison, transportation accounted for 33.5% of CO2 emissions, and industry just 19.6%.
Reader Comments (2)
The concept of Passivhaus makes it possible, to construct buildings with a very efficient heat recovery and to do that cost-effective. This is difficult in other cases, because heat recovery systems form a quite expensive additional investment to the heating system - normally it is difficult to have a reasonable pay-back-time.
Wow! That's really nice! I guess you can find many fine and skilled architects in Toronto.