Mainstreaming Passive Buildings by Re-Thinking Design Premiums

Registration Information:

To register for this course - please reserve your seat for the "Phius Passive Building Summit" located in the Greenbuild agenda.

Registering for the session holds your seat in the class until 5 minutes prior to the scheduled start time. At that time your seat in the session can no longer be guaranteed.

If a workshop or session is full, you will not be able to add it to your agenda; however, if you have the appropriate pass you will be able to enter the session on a first-come first-served basis 5 minutes prior to the scheduled start of the event so long as capacity has not been reached

Greenbuild staff at the entrance of the session have the ability to stop permitting entrance to the session when the room hits the set capacity.

Description:

Passive (PHIUS-Certified) buildings are healthier, more resilient, and use a lot less energy than conventional buildings. The benefits to owners and occupants of passive buildings can be truly impressive: 1. Improved alertness and respiratory health from providing 100% fresh outdoor air supply with only a nominal energy penalty. 2. The security and peace of mind that results from the building’s ability to hold a nearly constant temperature for days in a power outage, and 3. The operational cost savings that come from using less than half the energy of a conventional building. Based on these amazing benefits it is fair to ask: “How could every new building be a passive building?”

Passive buildings achieve their exemplary performance by following five green building principles: 1. Continuous insulation, 2. High performance windows and doors, 3. Smaller space conditioning systems, 4. Airtight envelope, and 5. A balanced heat and moisture recovery system (to enhance indoor air quality.) Put simply, these building-science-based principles result in a better-than-average building. But passive buildings can cost more than conventional construction—a cost premium of 6% or more— enough to pose a significant barrier to the widespread adoption of passive building design.

Architects are uniquely positioned to lead their clients to achieve PHIUS-certification for the least possible cost premium. Here’s how. Most architect-designed projects feature design upgrades and amenities that increase building costs by 5 to 10% as compared to conventional buildings. Through “integrated design” it is possible to reallocate how money is spent in a building project to achieve the benefits of passive buildings within the client’s budget. There are two challenges of pulling this off: 1. The scarcity of the expertise to lead a team through the cost reallocation process, and 2. The architect’s strong emphasis on how a building looks, makes it hard to shift money from visible to invisible design elements. The most promising strategy to mainstreaming passive buildings hinges on the ability of architects to retrain their brains—to exercise neuroplasticity—to assign higher value to beneficial things they cannot see.