Most of the PassiveHouse projects we show on TreeHugger are pretty splashy and flashy; every design site loves pretty pictures. But around the world, under the radar, projects are being built that show how the PassiveHouse concept is catching on and having a big impact on buildings and the people who live in them.

For example, down the road from Toronto in gritty, formerly industrial Hamilton, Ontario, Indwell, a charitable organization has been building housing as “a Christian response to deinstitutionalization” for forty years, providing support for vulnerable adults dealing with mental health issues. And more recently, the housing they have been building has been designed to the tough PassiveHouse standard.

This was, for me, the most remarkable slide shown by Graham Cubitt of Indwell, shown at the PassiveHouse Canada presentations at IIDEX in Toronto. It shows the dramatic decline in energy intensity in their buildings, starting on the left with an ordinary Multiple Unit Residential Building (MURB). Every building they do is better than the previous one.

 

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