Modern Passive House Design | Karuna House | Newberg | Oregon | HOLST

Karuna House is an ambitious residential project designed to meet a combination of the world’s most demanding green building certifications. Built in response to its location on a south facing slope overlooking the Willamette Valley’s rich agricultural land, Karuna House provides spectacular views of majestic Mt. Hood and the Cascade Range to the east.

Heating, cooling, and hot water are supplied by an efficient heat pump system, and a heat recovery ventilator provide the Passive House with a continuous supply of fresh, preheated air. The home’s super-insulated building envelope is expected use 90% less heating and cooling energy than a typical home......more

Energy Efficient House | House 19 | Amersham | England | Jestico + Whiles

House 19 is designed as a carbon neutral, energy efficient home in the ancient historic town of Old Amersham, nestled in the Chiltern Hills. The house fuses traditional forms and local materials in an elegant and modern way to make full use of the natural aspect and orientation of the site.

The development of a simple plan and section has delivered a house of exceptional quality whilst at the same time bringing together the most comprehensive range of passive and active energy-saving features in a well-considered, thoughtful assembly of light-filled spaces, suited to 21st century living.......more

Tanzanian Sustainable House | Baobab House | Tanzania | Asante Architecture & Design

The first house to be built at ECONEF Children’s Center, Tanzania, 2013.

Objectives and expected results of the Baobab House:

– To develope a sustainable house typology that is adapted to the local climatical, cultural and economical conditions in a northern Tanzanian context
– To integrate sustainable low-cost techniques such as rain water harvesting, solar panels, solar water-heating and ecological compost toilets in the architectural design
– To promote and spread knowledge on sustainable construction methods by creating a replicable house typology and documenting the process in building manuals
– To increase respect for the local building tradition, low cost techniques, and low maintenance solutions
– Increased access to clean water by environmentally friendly rain water harvesting solutions
– Increased environmental engagement and awareness
– Reduced dependency on private donations......more

Modern Austrian House Design | L-House | Burgenland | Austria | Architects Collective,

The two-story house is located on a southwestern slope overlooking the hilly countryside. As is typical for the region, the L-shaped structure forms a protected courtyard to the north. The end of the L-shape cantilevers up to eight meters and forms a covered carport area that allows direct access into the courtyard located behind. The 300m2 indoor area is characterized by an open staircase which connects the two floors. At the pivot point of the L-shape, there is an open area that is intended as a children's play area and library. This is also where all circulation areas and stairwells come together. From this point, the courtyard as well as the living and sleeping areas are all within view. Due to a careful building arrangement, all rooms have access to natural light and can be cross ventilated. Heating of the house is done through a biomass wood chip plant, which is operated jointly with several neighbors. The L-shaped building form is completed by a mirror-like protected square courtyard......more

Sustainable House Design | Mona Vale House | New South Wales | Australia | Choi Ropiha Fighera

Our response orients the house toward the view to the south, but opens up the roof at the centre of the house with a large north-facing skylight to admit winter sun to the south facing living areas and to trap and hold the warmth of the winter sun using the thermal mass of the structure.

Other sustainability measures include a 15,000 L rainwater storage tank combined with grey water recycling to minimise water usage, the use of evacuated tubes for in floor heating and hot water supply, and photovoltaic solar panels to provide electricity back to the grid........more

Sustainable House Design | The Canal House | Sander Architects

The Canal House is composed of three cubes: one raised at the street as a studio, two together at the canalside as the residence. In its concept and execution, the house is informed by two ideas, one embracing the possibility of the poetic, the other a more specific kind of material formation........more

Passive House Design | Camden Passivhaus | London | Bere Architects

This timber framed 118m2, two bedroom house is the first certified Passivhaus in London, setting a benchmark for energy efficient design for the city. The primary objective of the project was to achieve a comfortable home for the client’s young family, while minimizing energy consumption. The 118m2, two bedroom, family house is constructed with a heavily insulated prefabricated timber frame set inside 3m retaining walls and clad in European larch. It is cheap to run, achieving a heating saving of 90% compared to existing housing; low in carbon emissions; and is bright and airy, with sliding doors on to a south facing terrace..........more

Modern English Sustainable House | Camel Quarry House | Cornwall | England | McLean Quinlan

Camel Quarry House is an informal, practical and low energy family home. The use of more sustainable sources of energy includes ground source heat pumps and solar panels concealed in the roof. The walls and roof are heavily insulated to reduce heating loads, windows are triple glazed using high performance insulative glass and water is obtained from an onsite bore hole..........more

Energy Efficient House | Hsu House | Danby | New York | Epiphyte Lab

The Hsu House, is a small 2200 sq.ft. house designed using passive solar principles to create an inexpensive, energy efficient dwelling for a young family. Rising out of a hillside south of Ithaca in upstate New York, the bifurcating monopitch roof covers a house organized around a three story main living space, which functions as both spatial nexus and a trombe wall assisted ventilation stack. This space is bifurcated by an interior south facing cast-in-place concrete heat sink mass wall, which stores sensible heat and animates light, creating an all season solarium that, in the summer, opens and unfolds into the natural landscape. Exterior surface of the house features solar-responsive siding pattern animating facade color composite from dark to light according to the its orientation..........more

Modern Sustainable House | Malibu 5 | Kanner Architects

Vertically stacked and set into a hillside, Malibu 5 is a sustainable modern home constructed of environmentally friendly and recycled materials and designed to minimise energy use.

Conceived as a passive solar house that would make a minimal used of power grid, the house has photovoltaic panels on the roof......more

Passive House | Villa Nyberg | Borlänge,Sweden | Kjellgren Kaminsky Architecture

Kjellgren Kaminsky has produced Swedens first series of passive houses sold as type houses in collaboration with Emrahus, our goal is to make this environmentally friendly building technique available for all. Villa Nyberg is the first one to get built. The villa has been customized for the Nyberg family and is situated in Borlänge, central Sweden.
Passive houses are extremely well-insulated buildings that are largely heated by the energy already present in the building - people and our household equipment generate a lot of energy. Our energy simulations show that this villa will have an energy consumption for heating of only 25 kWh/m²year........more

King Residence | Santa Monica | California | John Friedman Alice Kimm Architects

Neighborliness: The King Residence rejects the standard public front yard/private backyard typology, opting instead for a structure whose living spaces and bedrooms open onto a relatively large garden and patio that faces the public streets and surrounding houses. While this arrangement puts much of the family’s communal and individual life on display, this is a positive feature for the Kings. The house’s blurring of public/private reinforces the sense of community that they embrace and encourage.

Siting and Massing: By setting the house towards the rear of the site, the house does not crowd the intersection. Read in a more volumetric way, the house is a solid mass in which one corner has been carved away, revealing the house’s inner life. But the structure can also be interpreted as series of planes, where angled walls that respond to the site’s wedged shape also contribute a degree of privacy for the house’s bedrooms. With a similar intent, the roof of the dining and “hangout” wing, angled to follow the gentle slope of the site, creates a sense of shelter for its inhabitants.

Materiality: Primarily composed of renewable materials such as plaster and cement board, the general permeability of the house is reinforced by its green and gray cement board painting pattern, designed to echo the dappled light one sees when looking through a tree towards a sun-filled sky. The wood screens, made of vertically-oriented Ipe, further help to dematerialize the structure’s opaque walls.

Light, Space, and Sustainability: Echoing the openness of the house to the neighborhood, the interior of the house is a series of free-flowing, continuous spaces that fosters a supportive, interactive family lifestyle. Generous use of skylights creates constantly changing light conditions that activate the interior. Extensive vertical glazing reduces the need for artificial lighting and enables ocean breezes to naturally ventilate the entire house, which does not include an air-conditioning system....more

Santa Fe Retreat | Santa Fe, New Mexico | Overland Partners Architects

This private retreat serves as a prototype for a sustainable compound of structures and outdoor spaces that comfortably serve a broad array of uses. The retreat accommodates 14 guests for extended periods of time and has the capability and infrastructure necessary for hosting large charitable events and integrating office spaces and conference rooms for corporate needs as well as providing health and recreation activities.

A model of sustainable design, all materials are local and the architectural character is inspired by the historic culture of stone and adobe building materials while incorporating rainwater and greywater harvesting systems used to irrigate roof top gardens. Abundant use of natural light and building orientation to capture views and natural breezes reduces the need for mechanical and electrical systems........more

Single Family Home | The Ellis Park House | Toronto | Altius Architecture

4,300 sf. Single Family Home. Toronto, Ontario. Completed 2006.

The Ellis Park House was conceived as a contemporary ecological home in Toronto’s vibrant Bloor West Village neighbourhood.
Constructed on an overgrown infill site just steps to Bloor Street the house is earth sheltered into a hillside and enjoys spectacular vistas over High Park.
The holistic and integrated approach to sustainable design results in a bold modern house with exceptional green features.
Passive strategies shape the design and greatly reduce the energy loads while advanced active systems efficiently address what little loads remain.
The Ellis Park House exemplifies residential architecture that is responsive to its site, its urban context, the contemporary lifestyles of its occupants and their desire to minimize their environmental impact.
The home was constructed on an overgrown infill site, just steps from Bloor Street, that was considered unbuildable because of its 45 slope and shallow depth.
Where others saw obstacles, the design team saw potential for an earth sheltered home, ideally sited in an urban context with good solar orientation and exceptional vistas over Toronto’s High Park.........more

Scraphouse | Civic Center Plaza | San Francisco California | Jensen Architects

Designed in collaboration with Public Architecture and other local design firms for World Environment Day 2005, this green demonstration home is built entirely of salvaged materials. Erected on the Civic Center Plaza adjacent to San Francisco City Hall, ScrapHouse showcases the creative use of previously discarded materials. Some materials were re-invented for their intended purpose, such as a chandelier using several discarded lamps. Other solutions present scrap in innovative ways. One wall, composed of 500 old phonebooks stacked vertically, provides both insulation and surface texture. Rethinking a standard single-family home, the ScrapHouse facilitates design discussion and community awareness about the possibilities to “reclaim, recycle and re-use.”....more

Modern Barn | Inverness California | Gustav Carlson Design

This sustainable eco friendly house on 3 acres gently unfold into the landscape with a form conducive to passive solar design. The power coated transom windows offer air circulation and ventilation. The large eaves and outdoor room spaces, such as covered porches and decking bleed into the landscape.....more

Maine Island House Designed By Alex Scott Porter Design

This three-season retreat house is situated on the outermost inhabited island in Maine. The island has no roads, stores, electricity, water service, year-round inhabitants or ferry service – no grid. The house can store enough solar energy and rain water to power a refrigerator, lights, kitchen tap, outdoor shower and outlets for music or a laptop for as long as you’d like.

DESIGN & CONSTRUCTION
The 550 square foot house, on a tiny lot, sits right on the water facing the harsh northeastern open ocean – winds clocking 100 mph were measured this year. The house was designed with a hard, protective aluminum shell to close up in the off-season, by three large sliding doors. The exterior needed to be virtually maintenance free, a challenge with the corrosive salt air. But in mild weather the house opens up to take in the prevailing breezes and soak up the daylight. Technolgy-wise, the house has photovoltaics with large-capacity batteries, a 525 gallon cistern, a composting toilet, and a solar refrigerator originally designed for keeping medical supplies cold in Sub-Saharan Africa. The local lobsterman turned out to be a great source for sustainable energy information as he had been living off-the-grid for decades. The construction had to be planned to the nail, as all the materials came out at once, on an amphibious Vietnam-era US Army landing craft that pulled right up onto the beach (Everyone on the island came out to watch). All the framing is on a 2-foot grid for fail-proof planning and coordination. The simple interior uses unfinished north-eastern woods. In addition, truly local materials were used—beach stones for the hearth and island-cured concrete counters – as well as recycled plastic laminate for the cabinets...........more

Affordable Single Family Prototype House | R House | Syracuse New York | Della Valle Bernheimer

Location: New York State
Square Footage: 1,100
Type: Residential
Year: 2010

R-House was created in full collaboration with Architecture Research Office. The prototype residence that our two design firms envisioned for Syracuse, New York, is called “R-House”, a winner of Syracuse University’s “From the Ground Up” competition, held in conjunction with the Syracuse Center of Excellence and Home Headquarters as part of their initiative to revitalize the Near Westside neighborhood of Syracuse. R-House presents an affordable, innovative paradigm for minimal to net-zero energy consumption embodied in architecture that is meant to nurture the spirit and engage the community as much as it is meant to perform in terms of cost and sustainability. Wrapped within its iconic exterior are expansive and luminous spaces that require only the equivalent energy of a hair dryer for heating. This efficient plan can be tailored to meet the needs of different families and is readily adaptable as these needs change over time. Designed for high economic and practical performance, R-House strengthens the physical and social structure of the Westside neighborhood.R-House won an Award of Merit from the AIA NY Chapter, 2010.........more

Sustainable Home Design | San Carlos Residence | Aleck Wilson Architects

The program for this house was to create a warm contemporary home with an emphasis on green materials and technology. We began this process with the siting of the building, to preserve a creek that runs through the front yard, set the axis of the building to optimize solar heat gain in the winter as well as protect a patio and garden approach from the summer heat and winds. This orientation, coupled with a butterfly roof provides for an efficiently oriented photovoltaic array as well as playful interior spaces, this space is accentuated with Kalwall translucent panels. Sustainable, durable and recycled materials were used, in combination with low VOC paints and cabinet materials, high efficiency radiant heat and other details complete the sustainable emphasis. Spatially, rooms are defined by varied ceiling treatments and open structural treatments, highlighted by the dining room, with a two story ceiling, framed by steel structure with a horizontal datum defined by an ipe and steel bridge and trellis.....more

Villa Welpeloo | Rotterdam | The Netherlands By 2012 Architecten

Villa Welpeloo is a residence for a couple with the exquisite wish to store and show a collection of paintings and graphical work of young contemporary artists. 2012Architecten aspired to use as much surplus materials as possible. Scouts have (re)searched the possibilities and availability of surplus materials in the vicinity of the site during the design phase. Based on the findings there was a continuous stream of new incentives to develop the design further. The found materials resulted in new shapes and new ways of construction. For the facade the inner parts of a cable reels are used. The load bearing construction is made from steel beams from a paternoster (textile factory machine).....more