Working With Standards

Architects at the leading edge of sustainable building practices weigh the pros and cons of pursuing an array of ever-evolving “green” certifications.

- Audrey Gray

The rear facade of Alan and Becky Solomon’s recently retrofitted Brooklyn row house is a neighborhood conversation piece. Those mod tropical-hardwood slats back there? Now repurposed, they used to be part of the Coney Island Boardwalk. The couple, meanwhile, marvel at subtler upgrades to their 120-year-old home: For one thing, there’s no “house smell” now, only breaths of outside-fresh air in every room. And each time they shut their triple-pane-glass front door, the city’s incessant jackhammers and sirens just vanish. “It’s so quiet,” Becky says.

Those sensory pleasures—a sealed envelope, the constant air circulation— are telltale signs of a passive house– certified project. Though it’s rare for architects to attempt to meet passive house’s stringent energy-efficiency requirements on a retrofit, Paul Castrucci was willing to work with the Solomons. In fact, the Manhattan-based architect markets his firm on those very skills; nearly a third of his commissions end up passive house–approved.

Yet you won’t hear him pressing his clients to pursue LEED certification. “LEED is unnecessarily difficult,” Castrucci says. “It would have cost $40,000 for paperwork on this project. That’s your solar system!”