🌆 ACE Club Digest - Get Schooled on Passive House

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The next ACE Club meetup is on March 18 at 6:00pm. Meet us at Printer’s Alley in Midtown for great company and conversation

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Get Schooled on Passive House

The headline I recently found reporting on a NYC School designed to Passive House standards immediately brought my mind back to the steaming hot classrooms of my public grade school days. Luckily for some Downtown Brooklyn students, they’ll be attending school in a building that consumes ~1/3 the amount of energy than a typical NYC school as it is designed with Passive House Standards.

The article breaks down Passive House into five core construction principles to hyper- insulate the building keeping the interior climate at a healthy level for occupants at ultra efficiency. Passive House isn’t new, but has been highlighted recently as a path toward sustainability in the built world and resiliency against weather events.

Photo: Credit: James Ewing / JBSA via 6sqft.com

Design Team: Architecture Research Office (ARO) + Alloy

We investigated NYC’s Passive House ecosystem and were surprised by what we found

After reading about this school we asked ourselves - how is the Passive House movement doing in the NYC area, anyway? Quite well it turns out!

There are a few ways to look at it. First, how feasible is it to build to PH standards in the Tristate area? Second, how many people are actually doing it? Finally, what kind of reception have these projects gotten?

When we looked into the feasibility question, we realized we were under a major misconception. We thought Passive House design & construction was extremely expensive. But it turns out that the average construction cost premium to be just 3.5% above standard construction!

Furthermore, experienced design and building teams have proven crucial to optimizing costs, with the growing expertise in the New York market further enhancing cost competitiveness.

Owners also love the benefits of PH. As one Passive House owner in the region stated,

Featured Member & Project

Have you worked on a project that you’d like us to feature? Tell us about it!

💼 Jobs

• Trunk Tools is hiring for a ton of roles, including sales, marketing, recruiting and product management

• Conrad Consulting is hiring for a Facade Engineer to create and rehabilitate sophisticated building envelopes and specialty enclosures from concept through construction

👨‍🏫 Upcoming AEC Courses & Events

• (3/15) Design for Fire Resilience, a Reimagine Buildings Conference - register here

• (3/12-3/13) NY Build conference - register here

• (5/6 - 5/8) Living Future conference - register here

📰 Our favorite reads, listens & watches

• Alloy Development will begin the second phase of the Alloy Block with the construction of One Third Avenue. At 725ft tall, the building will become the tallest Passive House building in the world!

• OMA's expansion for iconic new museum in new york to open in fall 2025. Designed in collaboration with Cooper Robertson, this 60,000 square-foot addition will mark OMA’s first public building in the city

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Until next time,

Emma & Sawyer