There’s so much to see in New York City, including lots of certified Passive House buildings. Here’s another side trip I did during last year’s family holiday. The House is a 26-storey apartment building on Roosevelt Island, housing 352 rental apartments for Cornell Tech students, faculty and staff. It was the world’s largest certified Passive House building when it was completed in 2017.
We got there via aerial cable car, which was fun but hot. Seeing the building from this level helped me get how huge The House is. New Zealand only has two buildings (barely) taller: the Majestic Centre and the AON Tower. In New York, The House is just a high-rise.

The House at Cornell Tech highlighted in yellow from the aerial cable car.
This building envelope is made from prefabricated one-storey tall panels with the tripled-glazed windows pre-installed. The panels were moved by barge to the island and craned into place similar to a curtain wall enclosure. The sequencing and quality control was very intentional. My favourite design feature is an exterior mechanical space on every level to reduce riser space and allow decentralized systems. It’s very clever and not how it’s typically done on a high-rise building.
The airtightness is super impressive! Random fact: even a building this big could be airtightness tested using only a single blower door. In theory at least. Probably it was easier to use more.
Leaky ductwork makes it hard to control the conditioned airflow. This project used Aeroseal to tighten it all up; this article goes into the detail of how the product works (and how well it worked on the vast lengths of ductwork in this building). A supplier is now selling Aeroseal here in New Zealand, btw.
There are huge numbers of Passive House projects in NYC and I would’ve loved to see more of them but it was after all a family vacation…
Lots of eye candy photographs and details at the architect’s website here: The House at Cornell Tech | Handel Architects.
Other Passive House projects visited on this trip: First US EnerPHit hotel