Last Week’s ‘Boots on the Ground’ event a Smashing Success!

Last Week’s ‘High Performance Design meets Boots on the Ground‘ event was a great success! With over 50 of the most cutting edge builders and architects in one room, the brain trust was on high alert!  As interest in high performance buildings and homes grows in the USA, Ontario seems a little slow to wake up to the reality of what’s talking the western world by storm; Passive House design/building.

 

Luckily, we had great company this past Tuesday as the innovators and early adopters of the Passive House technology/process gathered to share insights on how to accelerate the implementation of best practices.

 

Though still a the Innovators stage in Ontario, the province is poised to move to the Early Adopters part of the Passive House Process as more customers demand higher performance from their new buildings. As SustainableTO architect Paul Dowsett wryly quipped “Let me know when we hit the Chasm, so I can finally take a vacation.”

As the Toronto 2030 District  finally gets released, perhaps now the city of Toronto will be the first in Ontario to scale up the principles of Passive House to larger buildings as done south of the 49th.

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An apartment tower on Roosevelt Island that began construction this month will be the tallest passive-house high-rise in the world when it is completed in 2017 and at 270,000 square feet, it will also be the largest. The tower will rise 270 feet, contain 350 units and house about 530 graduate students, faculty and staff on a new 12-acre campus for Cornell Tech, energy consumption should be 60 percent to 70 percent less than that of conventional high-rises, the developers said.

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The Orchards at Orenco is a 57-unit affordable housing project near Portland, Oregon

 

Here are some of the brain-trust attendees enjoying the networking session:

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