If you were building a new house or gutting an old one and could drastically reduce energy use, enhance indoor air quality, and contribute to a greener future, would you do it? Most people likely would, which is why Passive House construction-which offers all of these advantages, and more is rapidly evolving from a system that used to be viewed as a fringe curiosity embraced by eco-warriors to a preferred new way of building.
"It's just a better building standard," says Alan Barlis, principal of the New York-based architecture firm BarlisWedlick, which has been building Passive Houses since 2008. "We've always been interested in craft, and we've always been interested in making sure that our design offers great value for the investment. Passive House is just a way to bring it all together, into a series of techniques that are very clear and amount to real results."
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Esta historia es de la edición April 2024 de Elle Decor US.
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The Empire Strikes Back - A 19th-century gem in Cambridge, Massachusetts, gets a tour-de-force restoration thanks to Frances Merrill of Reath Design.
Is it possible to simultaneously go back in time and leap forward? This was the challenge a couple set for themselves upon purchasing a salmon-pink 1869 house in Cambridge, Massachusetts, not far from Longfellow House, the National Historic Site that served as George Washington's headquarters during the revolution. We loved all the beautiful old details of this house, the homeowner says.
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And How! - Decorator Nick Olsen transforms a Sag Harbor home into a Hamptons retreat with an irreverent humor.
If you must go to the Hamptons, however-because it is devilishly good fun, after all-you may notice an apparently modest, low-slung cottage on Sag Harbor's Main Street and think, with a comfortable sort of feeling, Now that is how a house should look. Nestled amid the Botox bars, helipads, and club-staurants, it could almost set the sordid world aright both a rebuke and a solution to the chaos that surrounds it. A real home.
