The Passive House Movement in Williamstown: A Way to Healthier Living

Hicks Stone, a practicing Williamstown-based architect and a

certified passive house designer, will review the principles of passive house design, and

discuss how these can be easily incorporated into both new and existing building

construction. When put into practice, the cost of heating and cooling buildings will be

dramatically reduced. When combined with a modestly sized photovoltaic array, energy

costs can be eliminated.

Rather than using exotic and expensive mechanical systems and controls, or

incorporating unappealing aesthetic elements into building design, elements that were

commonly employed in earlier energy-conscious design movements, passive house

design is virtually invisible and only modestly increases the cost of construction on the

order of 5% of the overall construction cost.

Passive house design seeks to use simple and inexpensive methods to reduce home

energy consumption by at least 90%. The methods are based on building research

conducted in the U.S and Canada and refined by German and Swedish building scientists

in the 1980s. The principal certifying and educational body, the Passivhaus Institut was

founded in 1996 in Darmstadt, Germany.