With the passing of an old classmate at noon and with another clinging to life tonight on a ventilator, I am particularly mindful on this Earth Day of life’s fragility, and of our tenuous place on this planet. How do… read more →
The DC Chapter of the AIA held its annual awards jury this week, and our Stable Carriage House retrofit won a Citation for Sustainable Design. All of Izumi’s hard work managing a very difficult project paid off! Congratulations to the… read more →
After extensive excavation on a difficult site, the footings were poured this week, and as I write this post, the formwork for the basement walls is going up. What makes the site so difficult is the steep slope and the… read more →
Work is now complete on our DC Landmark carriage house deep energy retrofit. We have published pictures and a description of the project here.
Site work has begun on our newest net zero home. The builder is O’Neill Development, with whom we have worked on all of our Passive Houses. The first step was to de-construct the original house, in which the owners had… read more →
My family just spent two weeks of Christmas vacation in the 1850 SF farmhouse we renovated last year. You can learn more about the renovation on that blog. Here is how it performed with a family of 5 plus… read more →
This YouTube video is a presentation we just did for a community development group in Virginia interested in developing a new neighborhood of high performance net zero energy homes. Our concept is based upon using a combination of several basic… read more →
I have been reading recently of developments in the study of the human microbiome and its interconnection with the larger environment. It is changing my thinking about how we should be building our houses (and hospitals!). A microbiome is basically… read more →
It has been a long time since our last post and I’ll start with an update of some speaking engagements, as we have continued over the last year to get out the word on high performance building design. In June,… read more →
Construction is underway on our first deep energy retrofit of a historic structure. The Spencer Carriage House, listed as a DC Landmark and on the National Register of Historic Places, was built in 1905 to serve one of the large… read more →