GLASS: SAGEGLASS
(pictured above) For the quintessential Passive House building, the concept of energy efficiency must literally be embedded in the walls of a project. Here, The Frost School of Music at the University of Miami is using electronically tintable SageGlass, a product of Saint-Gobain, to offer students a more comfortable and creative environment for music making while also achieving aggressive energy-efficiency goals.
WINDOWS: CASCADIA WINDOWS & DOORS
As you’ll discover thumbing through this issue, glazing plays a central role in steering the construction of a building to Passive House standards. For attaining such desirable Passive House window features as triple glazing and ideal thermal performance, Cascadia Windows & Doors is one of Mary Ann Lazarus’s go-to brands.
SHADE: KAWNEER NORTH AMERICA
With the generally large glazing that tends to accompany the application of electrochromic glass, effective shading is often in order. Though integrated exterior shading devices, like the kind Kawneer offers, are sustainable luxuries we’ve long saluted our peers overseas for championing, the good word has spread to the US.
INSULATION: ECOBATT
Good quality insulation is one of the chief requirements in reaching the gold standard of Passive House perfection. Lazarus proclaims EcoBatt by Knauf Insulation to be among her most favored options for insulation that is both effectual in peeling back energy consumption and reliable for meeting all requisite human and environmental health necessities.
SOFTWARE: CLOCKWORKS
Living in the digital age, it is practically incumbent upon us to utilize the technologies unavailable to generations past for the betterment of executing sustainability practices. Our guest editor endorses the KGS Buildings product Clockworks for useful organizational properties such as benchmarking and reporting.
REFERENCE: BUILDINGGREEN
As far as the internet goes, for building green Lazarus’s go-to is, quite fittingly, BuildingGreen.com. Lazarus describes the website as containing “the most reliable information about sustainable materials and products, news, and strategies.”
