It’s tiny! It’s shiny! It’s prefab! It’s passivhaus!
Passivhaus, or Passive House for those who hate all things European, is a performance standard that is being used all over the world. In North America it is being questioned by many; over at Green Building Advisor, Martin Holladay summarizes fourteen problems with the standard as determined by PHIUS, or Passive House US. It is a complex and technical issue that I am not yet comfortable tackling, but points include:
- Passive House doesn’t work in all climatesPassive house isn’t cost effectivePassive house has a small house penalty
Not only is it passive, it’s prefab, built by Carbonlite Design+Build (great name!). Because of the amount of insulation in passive house designs and the mechanical ventilation systems required to manage air changes, and the lack of the need for solar gain through windows in the Australian climate, they can throw out a lot of those things that I thought were in the sustainable design rule book:
© Carbonlite
I have always liked corrugated steel siding too, shiny and reflective in the sun, and really cheap. It makes the house what Bronwyn Barry calls BBBTM - “boxy but beautiful”. Combine it with deep overhangs to shade those windows and they hit the required Passivhaus numbers. There aren’t too many passive houses in Australia and if I lived there, I suspect I wouldn’t want to be bottled in like this, and prefer Andrew Maynard’s approach to green building where you do design for natural ventilation and orientation, and blur the line between inside and outside. But it does show that the standard can be applied just about anywhere and in any size.
