#passive-house

#passive-house

By now you've probably heard about the Passive House movement. Essentially, it's a design standard focused on maximizing the energy-saving capacity of your home through a series of interventions. Some of these strategies aren't overly expensive, but others, such as adding thick insulation to your building's walls, require a deep retrofit-which gets pricey. And there can be drawbacks, especially if your older home has details like decorative molding that you want to preserve. But you can benefit from green technology without going full Passive House.

If you've found yourself infatuated with a crib or toddler bed in the last 20 years, chances are they were designed by Oeuf. The Brooklyn-based lifestyle brand is the brainchild of Sophie Demenge and Michael Ryan, a couple who have been making things together since meeting on a city sidewalk at 2 am outside a furniture fair party. Sophie, who grew up in Paris, was at the time about to graduate with a degree in industrial design from Pratt Institute,

Nestled away in Toronto's Don Valley Ravine, the West Don Ravine Passive House makes history as the city's first PHIUS-certified home. Gregory Rubin of Poiesis Architecture designed it for his parents, turning a personal project into something much bigger. After 15 years working on high-end projects, his parents gave him complete creative control for his first ground-up build. The timing couldn't have been better.