Passive House in Skibet, Denmark, designed by aart Architects
We enjoy hearing about buildings with impressive performance data or interesting wall assemblies. However, what gets us far more excited are high performance buildings that are simply beautiful.
In their early stages, green building movements such as Passive House tend to attract visionary but often more technical thinkers. Advances in socially and environmentally responsible buildings often come at the cost of thoughtful design, as designers, builders and clients, filled with a sense of purpose, strive to meet new technical or environmental challenges. Unfortunately, architecture is seldom green, and far too often, green buildings are not architecture. The Brute Force Collaborative don’t mince their words when they claim that “most homes being built are horrendous and almost as many being peddled as green are really just greenwashed and appalling.” Therefore we applaud those who bridge the gap and manage to do both: practice the art of crafting beautiful spaces that also happen to not require barrels of oil to build and occupy.
Veteran Passivhaus architect Walter Unterrainer is quoted in Michelle Kaufmann’s blog echoing this sentiment: “While Walter commends the Passivhaus intentions, he says that it is about more than that. It is about good design. ‘Designing a Passivhaus is easy. But we need to make sure we are designing good Architecture as well.’ It is much more than just calculations and scientific numbers. ‘Good architecture is not a scientific result.’”
Passivhaus Nagl, Wieselburg, Austria, 2006. Designed by Neu|Bau Architektur
Passive House has become an international movement. New buildings have been popping up on nearly every continent. As more buildings are built to meet the standard, the portfolio of well-designed buildings becomes increasingly diverse. This is especially the case in Germany and Austria, where with approximately 20,000 Passive Houses built, the collective experience has reached a critical mass. In some areas, the Passive House standard has become so ubiquitous that certified buildings are often no longer advertised as such, making it difficult for a web surfer such as myself to determine which examples qualify for this blog entry. In Vorarlberg, the western most state of Austria, a new law enacted in 2007 actually mandates that all new public buildings be built to the Passive House standard, moving Passive House away from the central design feature to just another element of the building code.
Passive House alone is not impressive. Beautiful buildings are. They inspire and invigorate the movement. As designers, what we are inspired by in architecture is a clarity and cohesion in concept; a simplicity and consistency in vision. We are drawn to the well proportioned, to the balance of symmetry and asymmetry, to restraint and modesty. To the expression and articulation of the basic things architecture is made from: structure, material, construction, form & space, light & shadow. To the expressive and honest use of raw and elemental materials, and the balance and juxaposition of those materials. To elegant details that are not mere decoration but an inherent part of the building, with an absence of superfluous detailing or pointless whimsical architectural gestures. And primarily to the crafting of compelling spaces that you would want to inhabit.
So, here are some high performance homes from around the world which we feel stand out from the rest. This first round showcases single family residences:
Mathis Haus, Dafins, Austria
Designer: Architekten Hermann Kaufmann, Schwarzach, AT
Completed: 2005
Construction: wood construction
Energy use: unknown
Low energy house
images: Bruno Komflar
For more info: Hermann Kaufmann
Passivhaus Merz, Langerringen, Germany
Designer: Markus Merz, Langerringen, Germany
Completed: 2006
Square footage: 211m2
Energy use: 14kWh/m2/yr heating demand
Certified Passive House
images: Sascha Kletzsch
For more info: Bayerische Architektenkammer
Home For Life, Denmark
Designer: aart Architects A/S, Arhus, DK
completed: 2008
Energy use: 9kWh/m2/yr energy surplus
Square footage: 200m2
window area = 40% of floor area
Claims to be the world’s first “Active House”, a designation for houses that produce more energy than they consume.
Doppelwohnhaus (Duplex), Sistrans, Austria
Designer: Maaars Architecture, Innsbruck AT
Completed: 2008
Construction: cross laminated timber panels
Energy use: 14kWh/m2/yr heating demand
Certified Passive House
Photography: Bruno Klomfar
For more info: brute force collaborative blog
Passivhaus Vogel, Sattel-Mostelberg, Switzerland
Designer: Diethelm & Spillmann, Zürich CH
Completed: 2010
Construction: sand-lime masonry, cross laminated timber panels
Energy use: unknown
Certified Minergie-P (swiss equivalent to Passivhaus)
images: Diethelm & Spillmann
For more info: designboom
Passivhaus mit Stahlhülle, Ulm, Germany
Designer: Architekten Mühlich, Fink & Partner, Ulm, Germany
Completed: 2005
Construction: renovation
Energy use: 13kWh/m2/yr
Certified Passive House
images: Martin Duckek
For more info: enbausa.de
Casa Pasiva Arboretum, Llieda, Spain
Designer: Josep Bunyesc Arquitecte, Llieda, Spain
Completed: 2009
Construction: wood construction
Energy use: 10kWh/m2/yr heating demand
Passive House
For more info: bunyescarchi.wifeo.com, archtlas.com
Passivhaus Dr. Williet, Satteins, Austria
Designer: Walter Unterrainer, Feldkirch, Austria
Completed: 2002
Construction: light wood framing
Area: 147m2
Energy use: 14.7 kWh/(m2a)
Certified Passive House
Villa Stoknes, Oslo, Norway
Designer: Medplan AS Arkitekter, Oslo, Norway
Completed: 2009
Construction: solid wood panels
Energy use: 14.7 kWh/m²a
For more info: www.arkitektur.no
some great projects, bjorn. several in the PHBdW queue, especially unterrainer’s satteins house, which shares aspects of the types of projects i worked on in germany.
Mike,
Yes, Walter Unterrainer has some gorgeous projects. Unfortunately his website doesn’t do his work justice, and it’s missing much of his work. Actually the online media coverage of most of the Austrian PH projects is seriously lacking.
I love the depth and detail of your PHBdW posts and am curious how you find all that data. Hope this series of ours doesn’t step on your toes – I’m going to stick to a broader, less detailed survey of projects.
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unterrainer’s website could be a lot better.
coverage of not just AT but DE/CH/FR/BE/NL passivhaueser could be better. i find a lot of our info on the IG passivhaus websites, combined with a little prodding and multi-lingual google searches.
hardly stepping on our toes, you reminded me of a few projects we’ve been meaning to highlight and a few we didn’t know about.
sounds like we use the same online resources. I’ve had to figure out the name for ‘passive house’ in 1/2 dozen languages in order to find these projects.
Writing as a non-architect, I find that flat-roofed houses are rather ugly and brutal (largely because of the cubic geometry); and flat roofs always give problems.
Glass walls result in no privacy, and an absence of space to hang wall art; these are big negative elements.
I like the passive house concept of energy-saving however, and hope that your movement has good influence around the world.
How do you cope with the problem of excessive heat in summer, and the tendency of people to open doors and windows to “let in some fresh air and a little breeze”?
Brian,
Well, I guess design is subjective. What is beautiful to one person is an eye sore to the next. The beauty of energy efficient architecture is that it does not have a prescriptive style. And since most passive houses in the US so far have been built in traditional styles, these examples, built in countries that have a more widespread acceptance of contemporary design, were intended to make that point. If we were to design you a house, it would not have a flat roof or glass walls.
As for overheating, the primary strategy for avoiding excessive heat is through insulation and airtight construction, along with exterior shading for the windows. Stop the sun before it hits the glass. This was standard practice in buildings until the era of cheap oil that began 50 or so years ago. These strategies are sufficient for most temperate climates. Cross ventilating the house at night by opening windows will flush out excess heat. Additional supplemental cooling can be provided by a small energy efficient minisplit heatpump or a ground-source heat exchanger. In hotter climates that require more cooling, other strategies largely involving evaporative cooling can be employed.
Letting in “fresh air and a little breeze” is not a problem. These are still normal houses with operable windows. Some things to keep in mind however are that since you will have a ventilation system continuously replacing the air, your interior air quality is very high and your need to let in fresh air will be reduced. When the outside temperature is pleasant, opening windows is encouraged, and you could potentially even turn off your ventilation system to save energy. I have even heard of systems that have sensors on the windows to shut of the mechanical systems when the windows are opened. When the outside temperature is much colder, you can still open your windows, but keep in mind that if you let all your heat escape, you don’t have a furnace that you can blast, so it will take longer to recover that lost heat.
Bjorn,
Thank you so much for the posts. The performance-meets-design angle is exactly the message I’ve been talking about as well, primarily from the perspective of place-making, not so much “signature” design. I appreciate the research you’ve done to bring us these stylistically and geographically diverse examples, and your good writing as well. Having just completed Passive House Consultant Training, I hope to have some to publish soon! Our first foray is a near-PH, about 15% on SSHD, and the blower door came in a bit high, largely due to the N. American doors, we think. You can see it at passivehousemidwest.blogspot.com and go from there to the owner’s blog as well if you’d like.
Cheers,
Tom
Brian S.,
There are plenty of examples of Passive Houses that have a more traditional, sloped-roof expression. Nothing about PH forces boxiness, though simplicity is necessary…in fact, I find that many of them have window areas and surface-to-volume ratios more like old fashioned (pre-HVAC) buildings, for the same reasons. The PH standard is just as focused on comfort and hygiene as it is on energy efficiency–check out Dr. Feist’s interview in Britain on YouTube. Overheating is not allowed in PHs, but opening windows is. But when you have a filtered ventilation system, you start to like the clean, non-pollen-and-dust ventilation better than what comes in off the street. There are many examples of people with allergies doing much better in PHs because of the good air quality.
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