BIG NEWS

What a year! Let’s begin with the most recent and biggest news: we have changed our name! On January 1, Peabody Architects became

P E A B O D Y  F I N E  A R C H I T E C T S

Matt Fine has over 20 years’ experience in the design of multifamily housing and over ten years’ experience in Passive design. While David was working over the last ten years to develop single family Passive houses, Matt was pioneering multifamily Passive design. In 2015, we decided to team up to build a firm that creates only Passive and zero energy projects. Over the past five years we have stuck to that commitment. Our name change makes the partnership official! Over the coming weeks, we will be refreshing our outreach and will begin to reflect our long-term vision through website updates and social media posts.

A recap of our year…

“Like most businesses, the COVID-19 era has brought challenges and changes to our everyday practice, as we have adapted to a less face-to-face office culture. We truly miss the days of connecting deeper with our clients, collaborators, and colleagues and yearn to return from a largely virtual work environment. David remained in the office from March through June, with Matt and Izumi working from home. In July, David went truly remote and began working from Blue Hill, Maine through the rest of the year, with Izumi holding down the physical office. One project in early design stages was cancelled; all projects moved more slowly; but if anything, the rest of our work picked up through the year. Through the patience of our clients, we became accustomed to the new realty and are thankful that the work we do could go on, unlike that of so many in other service businesses.

While we were able to keep our projects moving forward, most non-project work went into suspended animation. Our effort with GMU to develop housing retrofit strategies is an example of that.  We look forward to a renewed effort on that front in 2021.

Groundbreaking for our microgrid project in Fairmount Heights is now expected in April. The COVID-19 delays actually may have been a blessing; they allowed the time necessary for the extensive negotiations between Pepco and Emera Technologies to authorize this pilot project. We have just this week learned that Pepco and Emera have finalized their agreement and the first affordable direct current community microgrid in the country will be a reality!  Stay tuned to the blog for more details on this.

The Arlington Net Zero house, with its direct current-ready nanogrid, also experienced delays but is now scheduled for completion in February. It is on target for achieving PHIUS Source Zero certification. We are excited for this house to be operational very soon. It best represents our vision of how a future-ready, resilient home will perform.

The waterfront Northern Neck Net-Zero Energy house is now complete and in final PHIUS certification stages. We will be putting up pictures on the re-booted website. In the meantime, here is a peak on Instagram.