PASSIVE HOUSE FOR NEW ORLEANS

Passive House for New Orleans
According to Architecture 2030 and the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the building sector consumes two-thirds (77%) of all electricity produced in the U.S. and is responsible for producing nearly half (46.9%) of U.S. CO2 emissions in 2009. By comparison, transportation accounted for 33.5% of CO2 emissions and industry just 19.6%. Globally, these numbers are even worse. However with this enormous problem, comes enormous potential. As the Obama Administration recently outlined in the Better Building Initiative, building energy efficiency is the most cost effective way to reduce our energy consumption and dependence upon fossil fuels.

The technologies necessary to achieve significant energy reductions in buildings are cheap and readily available: no exotic mechanical systems or costly renewable energy sources are needed. These technologies have already been successfully applied to achieve dramatic reductions in tens of thousands of buildings across Europe and North America using the Passive House Standard, the world’s most rigorous building energy standard. By combining an airtight, thermal-bridge free and super-insulated building enclosure, with passive internal and solar gains with balanced energy recovery ventilation, buildings built to the Passive House Standard have shown measured reductions in space heating and cooling energy consumption up to 90% compared to standard energy code requirements.

This challenge, coinciding with the 2011 AIA National Convention, seeks to address this issue directly by engaging the design community in developing a series of affordable, low-energy, single-family homes for the communities in New Orleans that are still recovering from the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina. The homes that are rebuilt in these communities will need to be sustainable in the broadest sense of the term: affordable to build and purchase, long-lasting, with minimal impact on the local environment, and affordable to heat and cool throughout the life of the building. Adhering our Challenge Objectives to the Passive House Standard will insure that all of these goals are met.

One of the first Passive House projects completed in the US, the Fairview House in Urbana, Illinois, was sold to a resident displaced by Hurricane Katrina. It’s time to give New Orleans residents a Passive House of their own to come home to.

Context
Lower Ninth Ward, New Orleans, LA
Typical lot in the Lower Ninth Ward. Please see the provided site model

Objectives
Design a low-cost, extremely low-energy home for New Orleans
Homes should meet post-Katrina building codes, guidelines and best practices
Homes should be shotgun typology and strive to create cohesive neighborhoods
Program - 1000 sf, to include (2) Bedrooms, (1) Full Bath, (1) Half Bath or 1250 sf, to include (3) Bedrooms, (2) Full Baths
First floor elevation - +5’ above grade
Lot size - 40’x104’
Setback – 20’ front yard with 6’ front porch, 20’ rear yard, 3-5’ side yard
Orientation – Typically long-axis along East/West, but consideration should be given to a North/South orientation as well
Design should strive to achieve Passive House Standard:
Airtight building shell ≤ 0.6 ACH @ 50 pascal pressure (simple, well-detailed construction)
Annual heat requirement ≤ 15 kWh/m2/year (4.75 kBtu/sf/yr)
Primary Energy ≤ 120 kWh/m2/year (38.1 kBtu/sf/yr)
Designs should demonstrate that affordable and sustainable homes can also be beautiful

Provided Materials
Key Passive House metrics spreadsheet
PHPP Climate Data for New Orleans
Building site with setbacks. Orientation may be changed (.dwg, .3dw, .rvt)

Precedent & Sources
Saft Residence
Duplex House for Make It Right / GRAFT
Brad Pitt’s Make It Right presents duplex homes for NOLA
Hotlinks, duplex house for Make It Right / Atelier Hitoshi Abe
Alligator / buildingstudio

Submission
Post design model and documentation (3d and/or 2d)
Post Key Passive House metrics spreadsheet
Post images
Post diagrams explaining approach (optional)
Post video explaining approach (optional)

Prizes
The winner of this HP-sponsored challenge will take home an HP Designjet T2300 PostScript eMFP, the world’s first web-connected printer with scan, print and copy functionality. A nearly $10,000 value, the HP Designjet T2300 eMFP helps simplify the printing process while letting teams print on the go and share files more easily than ever before.

The winner of this challenge will be featured on DesignReform on the first day of the AIA National Convention in New Orleans, May 12th

Judges
Alejandra Lillo - M. Arch., Partner of GRAFT - M. Alejandra Lillo received her first professional degree and license in Architecture at the University of Mendoza, Argentina, later pursuing a Master‘s degree in Architecture at the University of California Los Angeles. As a designer, project architect and project manager she has worked on numerous international award winning educational, institutional, commercial and residential projects while practicing in Canada and the USA. In 2007 M. Alejandra Lillo became Partner for the Graft Los Angeles office.

David Basulto - Co Founder and Executive Editor for ArchDaily.com - David is the cofounder of Archdaily, the world’s largest and most trafficked architecture website in the world. David graduated from Universidad Catolica’s architecutre program and decided to start an architecture blog with one of his friends. After a few years of hard work, David and team turned Archdaily into the world’s most important architecture website.

Corey Saft - Corey Saft is an assistant professor in the School of Architecture and Design at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. He is the second year co-coordinator and teaches graduate seminars in architectural theory and contemporary modes of architectural production and fabrication. He has also taught Site and Material and Methods classes. He received his M.Arch in 1999 from the University of Oregon where he first studied the
advanced passive techniques.

Trey Trahan - Victor F. “Trey” Trahan, III, FAIA is President and Principal-in-Charge of Trahan Architects, APAC, and has been recognized and published both nationally and internationally for innovative design and creative use of materials. An accomplished designer, Mr. Trahan received the 2005 Architecture Review Emerging Architecture Award in London, one of three firms in the world to receive this recognition and the only U.S. firm honored. In 2007, Trahan Architects was one of only five U.S. firms on Wallpaper Magazine’s list of the world’s 101 best emerging design firms. Mr. Trahan was elected to the AIA College of Fellows in 2006 at the age of 45.
DesignByMany Community - The top 10 entries based on user votes will be seen by the judges. User votes will be counted for a week after the submission deadline.

Link: http://www.designbymany.com/challenge/passive-house-for-new-orleans