In 2016 OFA was asked to write an article about our work for an upcoming book entitled Energy Accounts. Edited by two of my former professors at Penn State, Dan Willis and Katsuhiko Muramoto, the book showcases a wide range of work from architects committed to educating other design, engineering and construction professionals about the importance of “energy production, use and conservation in a manner sufficiently convincing to influence policy, behavior and design” of the built environment. OFA took the opportunity to reflect on the first 15 years of our evolving practice as it related to sustainability and Passive House projects. Download the full chapter HERE.

I thought it might be useful to pull way back for the uninitiated and give some context around Passive House and why it has guided the work of OFA for decades. For those of you who are just discovering us for the first time, a brief history of the Passive House (PH) movement is in order. Most broadly the PH standard represents one of the most rigorous voluntary energy performance standards in the design and construction industry today. Its origins, development, and growing global significance are deeply intertwined with the broader narrative of climate action and the urgent need for sustainable building practices to mitigate the impacts of climate change.

I am going to be speaking at Reimagine Buildings '24 on March 7th-8th!

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Along with AIA HSW Continuing Education credits in partnership with AIA New York State, Reimagine Buildings '24 live program sessions will also be submitted for Phius and PHI credits!

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“On March 27, 2024, at 9:00am Pacific time, the Building Decarbonization Coalition and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is putting on a seminar series on challenges and opportunities for home decarbonization entitled: Architectural Challenges in Shaping Sustainable Residential Buildings.

So, this is my first “blog”, and it doesn’t feel natural yet. I prefer having conversations, giving a lecture to a live audience, and debating ideas about how we can all more effectively make the transition needed to a carbon-neutral society. But for the past two and a half years, OFA has taken a turn in the really challenging, exciting and slightly frightening direction of Deep Energy Retrofits (DERs). For the past 15 years, we have been focused on designing and building Passive House market-rate and affordable housing projects. Our goals were to see if we could demonstrate that PH, Net Zero Energy projects were not only feasible to build from the ground up but can be done, with the right team, with little to no premium. We succeeded and failed throughout the years but in the process, we realized that “how” you build your PH project offers the greatest opportunity for innovation, scale and with it, affordability. This led us to exploring strategies for prefabrication, building our first Passive House project in a modular factory, and later projects with high-performance prefabricated panels. This experience comes in handy if you want to crack the nut on DERs!