TECHNICAL CHALLENGES OF PASSIVE HOUSE CERTIFICATION AND WHY THE STANDARD IS HERE TO STAY By Peter Dushenski and Veronica Johnson
Above: Cambridge Lofts Penthouse. Right: Vancouver House Bjarke Ingels.
What is Passive House? Passive House is a German-based standard that ensures high-performance building envelopes with the broad mandate of reducing energy loss through the building envelope by 90 per cent. Although the international Passive House Institute (PHI) is based in Germany, it actually has Canadian roots. Following the Oil Crisis of the early 1970s, The Saskatchewan Conservation House (SCH) laid the groundwork for the Passive House Standard as we know it today! Funded and built as a government research project, this early prototype didn’t have many windows and wasn’t what we might call “classically beautiful,” but it was incredibly effective at reducing operational energy demands. Of course, with 1970s glazing technology, it was easier to keep the building warm by reducing glazed area overall. However, given the productivity and mental health benefits of larger windows that have 16
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since then been well demonstrated, particularly with the recent global pandemic, with the benefit of hindsight we can now see that SCH made tradeoffs in the name of efficiency that didn’t translate into occupant well-being. So is there a way to have our cake and eat it too? Can we create a Passive House project that’s efficient, beautiful, and enjoyable to inhabit?
Cambridge Lofts Penthouse In 2011, an Alberta-based curtain wall manufacturer rose to the challenge of building an entirely passively ventilated single-family residence with curtain wall on all four sides. Replacing a mechanical shed on the 19th floor of a former office building turned condominium in downtown Edmonton,
this humble box was transformed by a team of talented architects at Reimagine (formerly Manasc Isaac) into a stunning two-bedroom penthouse in the sky. All of the corrugated steel from the mechanical shed was replaced with fibreglass-framed triple-glazed curtain wall, to incredible effect. Today, over a decade later, the penthouse is still occupied and very much enjoyed, remaining entirely comfortable down to -20 degrees Celcius with just the radiant heat from the floors below. Below such temperatures, as happens in Edmonton, there are a couple of fireplaces that have been installed.
Certifying to the Passive House standard The curtain wall manufacturer officially
