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client: Private Residence
employer: Sarah Nettleton Architects
role: Project Architect | Designer | BIM | Renderings
year: 2011
renderings: mrlw
In 2011 I began work on a new private residence slated for a development in the Twin Cities Metro Area. The bare site was developed, pad in place with all of the HOA criteria for new construction in the sub-division.
The challenge was that the client was interested in doing an off-the-grid home in a pre-defined residential district with specific design conditions. We explored several options for exterior wall construction. SIPS wall and roof panels, TJI Floor joists utilized as wall studs, double-stud exterior cavity walls, and brought on a local energy consulting firm for studies.
It was right around that same time that Passive House lost its accreditation, due to a lack of a singular set of criteria in the U.S. to set the criteria. Without that in place – virtually anyone could make a claim that they met Passive House standards as a marketing ploy without actually hitting any of the benchmarks. With that in consideration – the project was shelved.
As part of this portfolio – I retooled the interior design to tighten a few things up, provide additional bedrooms and a maker shop in the basement with an office/stream room downstairs next to a media room – so as much as its super insulated, I would assume that the energy use with a couple gamer kids – full maker space, and 2 bathrooms probably negates anything you pick up in heating costs or a roof top solar array (that isn’t visible from the street or the HOA) .
New Residence:
3,200 total square feet (1,600 SF 2 stories)
Features:
The concept of super efficient houses as part of an overall residential development is really interesting, and has some potential. Exploring the overall of a Passive House criteria, overlaying that criteria on existing home owner’s associations and development guidelines was a pretty valuable experience.
I find a little entertainment in flexing the ‘letter of the law’ design guidelines and creating a solution that meets all the established criteria, while maintaining a little aesthetic independence from the original McMansion intent of the guideline authors.
Empirically – there isn’t that much ‘rule breaking’ going on with this design. A home like this, would fit into virtually any suburban neighborhood, and when it could be entirely heated with a couple of hair dryers – I would think that would be a marketable commodity.
For an additional Easter Egg, some of these projects feature a multipurpose coffee & side table that I designed a few years ago that segments into a side-table or snaps with an adjacent one to form a coffee table.
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