Can New York be a passive city? We surveyed the experts

Speak with almost any passive house enthu­siast in New York City, and you’ll quickly learn that for them, it’s a labor of love. Ted Sheridan, as one of the part­ners of Ryall Sheridan Carroll Architects, put an emphasis for all of his employees to get passive house certi­fied begin­ning in 2003, long before passive house became popular in North America. Marija Gjorgjievska, Sheridan’s colleague for over 10 years, has also become well-versed in the building philos­ophy. Michael Robinson, of Urban Myth Construction, was inspired to build his own afford­able passive house multi­family unit in Newburgh, NY, for which he won a NYSERDA Buildings of Excellence award.

In the following Q&A, Skylight spoke to Gjorgjievska, Sheridan, and, sepa­rately, Robinson, about the unique chal­lenges of bringing the prin­ci­ples of passive house — synony­mous with inno­va­tion and new construc­tion — to a dense, historic place like New York City, and how its stan­dards could help the city’s build­ings meet emis­sions reduc­tions stan­dards of Local Law 97 (LL97). According to them, passive building offers a pathway to a more sustain­able city.

This inter­view has been edited and condensed.

What makes Passive House different from other building design stan­dards? What are its benefits?

Marija Gjorgjievska: What really was different about [the passive house stan­dard] was a more holistic view of the energy a building needs. So instead of saying, ​“You can put solar panels and generate the energy you need more effi­ciently,” it was saying, ​“Let’s make the building need less energy to begin with.” A lot of build­ings get built following some of these [passive house] prin­ci­ples, but getting certi­fied is really the best way to make sure that you do get a passive house that actu­ally performs to [specific] numbers.

Michael Robinson: For me, it’s like a cheap insur­ance policy. In twenty years, if you are a building owner and you’re trying to sell your building, [if] some­body should see that [Passive House certi­fi­ca­tion] plaque, the good news is that the thing was built with the future in mind. 

Among archi­tects and prop­erty owners who are conscious about energy effi­ciency, is passive house a popular method to adopt? 

MG: There’s many miscon­cep­tions about what passive house building looks like, or any sustain­able building. I think, even a few years ago, when you said passive house, [designers and contrac­tors] thought that [it meant] this is kind of like a box that’s unin­ter­esting, and that you cannot open the windows in your house because it’s mechan­i­cally venti­lated. All of these things are not true. People stayed away from it because of the fear of the unknown and it sounded compli­cated, even though it really isn’t.

What about chal­lenges with imple­menting passive house prin­ci­ples here in New York City? In a city where 80 percent of the housing is at least 50 years old, I can imagine it might be diffi­cult to adapt build­ings to these standards.

Ted Sheridan: When we are lucky enough to do a passive house that’s on a new site, we have total control over it. The insu­la­tion is part of the design in the roof and the walls, and even under­neath the base­ment slab. It wraps the whole struc­ture, bottom to top. But when you’re doing a reno­va­tion, you just can’t do that in New York City. The build­ings are already next to other build­ings, so you have to insu­late on the inside in some areas, and then if you’re lucky, you can insu­late on the outside in some areas. But when you insu­late on the inside and then have to shift to insu­lating on the outside, it’s a very tricky detail. It’s a place where it’s easy to have leaks. 

Are there ways in which passive building can be adapted for the reality of New York City buildings?

TS: There is a passive house retrofit stan­dard called EnerPHit that is a little more tailored to what we have to deal with in the city, where you just have to make some compro­mises in the air-tight­ness and insu­la­tion. It really was a response to archi­tects doing urban work, partic­u­larly in the Northeast, where the cities are dense and the build­ings are all next to each other. Although there’s still a path to achieving recog­ni­tion as a standard.

MR: It depends on the geom­etry of the building. Actually, for example, a high-rise building is kind of a perfect geom­etry for passive house. [Compared to] single-family homes, where they have little gabled dormers and this and that — that’s the hardest thing to insu­late. The simpler, theo­ret­i­cally speaking, and the taller rather than the wider the geom­etry, the easier it is to meet the passive house standard.

Do you have any advice for financing projects specif­i­cally designed to meet passive house standards? 

MG: There are some incen­tives at HPD, which is the Housing Preservation and Development Authority, espe­cially in afford­able housing. Doing passive house helps you get some of the grants that are avail­able. And NYSERDA would help pay for your training to become a certi­fied designer, and espe­cially for contrac­tors to train their trades, there’s also money avail­able for that.

Despite these chal­lenges, why is it impor­tant to push for passive houses in New York City?

TS: A passive house resi­den­tial building in New York is ideal in a lot of ways. It means you’re not ship­ping fuel to it. It’s not burning oil. It can be all-elec­tric and be perfectly comfort­able. It would certainly meet the LL97 stan­dards for energy effi­ciency. There’s a really powerful kind of synergy between passive house design and multi­family housing.

MR: My plea to people is to look further ahead than moving in and getting your certifi­cate of occu­pancy. With a few simple steps and the guid­ance of a few extra profes­sionals — that, yes, will cost you money, no ques­tion, and it’ll take more time in the design phase, no ques­tion — you could have a much more durable building, and a much more comfort­able building.

Reporting contributed by Camille Squires.