Model’s plans for massive build-to-rent Passive House developments in Melbourne was what set the 2025 Thrive conference in Australia buzzing but there were other presentations that really galvanised my attention. Kieran Leong and Ben Caine are Australian Passive House designers and architects working in quite different contexts but both their presentations offered some fantastic insights into how design professionals can …
PHINZ hui 2025: a summary and ideas for next year
What did you enjoy most? Well, talking to mates about Passive House is always my favourite. The Pecha kucha thing though! My expectations were low, I’m not familiar with the format, but it was very well done and really interesting. It whizzed through all of New Zealand’s different climate zones, with examples of projects from one end of the country …
Ara collab spreads Passive House influence
Ara Institute of Canterbury, a leading provider of construction training in the region, was the location for Sustainable Engineering’s last in-person certified Passive House tradesperson course. It was a great venue and we were very happy to have two Ara tutors in the course. Ara’s people liked what they saw, valuing the blend of practical and theoretical education offered by …
That’s not Passivhaus, that’s just expensive
Years ago I warned of what I dubbed cargo-cult architecture, where architects throw in a few high-performance components like expensive windows and lots of insulation and expect a high-performance building to magically result. It’s a recipe for disaster and particularly risks creating houses that are unbearably hot in summer. This approach is based on guesswork and magical thinking, not building science. …
Winthrop Center: world’s largest Passive House office space
I visited a bunch of big American Passive House projects while in the US last year to visit family. Among these was the Winthrop Center in Boston, MA. It’s currently the world’s largest Passive House office space, with 70,000m2 on offer. The building is about twice that size, as it also includes retail and residential space. Usually certification is on …
What I saw at Thrive: a model Model
Everybody was talking about Model and with good reason. Conference organisers gave this property developer and its consultants a lot of time to talk about its concept and the work currently in early design stage. Model describes itself as an “Australian purpose-first build-to-rent group” which is a bit of a mouthful, but its intentions are ambitious: “Our projects – designed …
A new conversation about housing in New Zealand
If you’re in the business of designing, building or advocating for better buildings in New Zealand, you need to read “Homes that meet our real needs“, a BRANZ report written by The Workshop. It’s a deep dive into how New Zealanders think and talk about their homes. Some of the insights will be familiar to those of us who have …
NZ homes are still cold, damp and unhealthy
New Zealand homes are slightly less cold in winter compared to 20 years ago. More New Zealanders appear to be heating at least some bedrooms, some of the time, to some extent. That’s the good news in the preliminary results from the HEEP2 study. It’s faint good news, given other findings. About a fifth of those surveyed said they could …
Useful advice on avoiding household mould
The prevalence of mould in New Zealand houses is a disgrace but it’s also not unique, as this American paper in the latest ASHRAE journal makes clear. The author claims about a third of older and newer single-family homes in the US north-west have visible mould, as these images graphically show. The article outlines causes but also proposes solutions, with …