Passive design

An overview of projects, products and exclusive articles about passive design

Project • By The Room Architecture and Design • Masterplans

Harvest Communities

Conventional residential subdivisions across Southeast Asia frequently prioritize mass earthmoving, clearing natural hydrology and productive soil to install rigid asphalt grids and high-density concrete housing. Harvest Communities presents an alternative masterplan model designed by The Room Architecture and Design, structuring residential expansion around preserved farmland, productive agricultural parcels, and natural contours. The plan prioritizes long-term operational efficiency and resource conservation by integrating living environments into an active agricultural landscape rather than displacing it. Built interventions sit lightly on the terrain, ensuring that natural water channels, soil microbiomes, and agricultural yields remain... More

Project • By EVA Architects • Nurseries

SHANGHAI QINGPU YINGXIU ROAD KINDERGARTEN

Qingpu Yingxiu Road Kindergarten is located in Qingpu New Town, Shanghai, within a predominantly residential neighborhood close to the Mao River and surrounding public green spaces. Designed as a 15-class kindergarten, the three-storey building brings together teaching, childcare, shared activity spaces and supporting facilities. The design draws on the architectural character of the Jiangnan region while responding to the educational needs of young children, integrating learning, play and contact with nature throughout the campus. The kindergarten is located in Qingpu New Town, Shanghai, within a predominantly residential neighborhood close to the Mao River and surrounding public green spaces.  ©EVA ARCHITECTS   The b... More

Project • By Pac Studio • Private Houses

Red Threads

Designed for a textile designer and artist, Red Threads reimagines a traditional Grey Lynn villa as a home, studio and lively presence in its neighbourhood. It also marks a milestone for Pac Studio: our first carbon-positive house! Its corner site presents two public faces and a useful tension between creative openness and domestic privacy. Samuel Hartnett Samuel Hartnett Samuel Hartnett Samuel Hartnett Samuel Hartnett The original house was clarified by removing an awkward street-front addition, extending the verandah and resolving the roof into a stronger composition of gabled and hipped forms. At the rear, the new work steps down the sloping site, reconnecting rooms that once sat well above the garden. A split-... More

Project • By kit | architects • Private Houses

Tower House

In a Swiss village just beyond the picturesque city of St. Gallen, Kit Architects has reinterpreted local vernacular with Tower House: a family home for four built from prefabricated timber and assembled onsite in just three days. The architects explain that the three-storey home demonstrates "how industrialised construction can enable resource-conscious and high-performance residential architecture." The result, contemporary in form and environmentally conscious in construction, sits in perfect harmony with the surrounding built landscape. Till Forrer     Till Forrer ❌︎ Remove Applied Products block will be inserted here     Location  The building is located on a triangular site at... More

Project • By Laboratory Sustaining Design / LSD Architects • Private Houses

Casa Vista Encantada

Located in the mountains of Mar Vista, Guanacaste, Casa Vista Encantada is a residential project composed of a main house and a guest house, organized as a direct response to the site’s elongated topography. The project adopts a linear configuration that follows the natural contours of the terrain, allowing each space to establish a specific relationship with the surrounding landscape. This spatial strategy generates a sequence of views and transitions, reinforcing the connection between interior and exterior environments. Fernando Alda Fernando Alda A central component of the project is its roof system, designed as an integrated environmental strategy. The sloped roofs enable controlled rainwater collection, which is comb... More

Project • By S 360 • Apartments

Kumbrata

Located one block from the emblematic Parque de la Alemán, Kumbrata is set within a consolidated urban context defined by its neighborhood identity, active community life, and historical value within the city of Mérida. The project proposes a contemporary reinterpretation of collective housing at a contained scale. It is a four-story building with two units per level, prioritizing spatial efficiency and environmental quality over intensive densification. Caption Caption Caption Caption Each apartment is configured with two bedrooms, both with en-suite bathrooms, allowing flexibility in use—from family living to co-living schemes or investment purposes. The internal layout is driven by functional cla... More

Project • By citic • Private Houses

3c2c

Located on the southern shore of Lake Rupanco in southern Chile, the 3C2C House is a single-family residence designed to blend seamlessly with its natural surroundings. The project is composed of three elongated volumes connected by two enclosed corridors—hence the name “3C2C” (3 Casas, 2 Conectores). This configuration preserves the openness of the site, framing lake and mountain views while reducing the building’s visual impact. © Nico Saieh © Nico Saieh © Nico Saieh © Nico Saieh The first volume contains the double-height social area—including kitchen, dining, and living spaces—with large windows oriented toward the lake and the Andes. The second volume hosts th... More

Project • By Sandbox Studio • Private Houses

Earth House by Sandbox Studio

Not immediately evident or present from approach, Earth House reveals itself as an intimate retreat, thoughtfully designed to respect its surroundings while asserting a distinct architectural presence. The decision to proceed with a single-storey structure, crowned by a skillion roof, complements the landscape without imposing on it, encouraging the architecture to insert itself harmoniously within the natural surroundings. This subtle integration of built form amongst the elements further emphasises a desire to live consciously and deliberately by the owners.  Katherine Lu Katherine Lu Katherine Lu At the core of the uniqueness of Earth House lies a commitment to material integrity and sustainable design. The centrepie... More
Studio Gang Unveils Expansion at California College of the Arts in San Francisco
Jason O'Rear

News • News • 12 Nov 2024

Studio Gang Unveils Expansion at California College of the Arts in San Francisco

Studio Gang has completed an exciting new expansion for the California College of the Arts (CCA) campus in San Francisco, extending the school’s existing main academic building. The new structure fosters a dynamic indoor-outdoor environment that supports both learning and creative practice, enhancing connections among students, ideas, and artistic disciplines. Jason O'Rear Founded at the dawn of the 20th century during the Arts and Crafts movement, CCA has grown into a hub for 34 diverse art and design disciplines, ranging from ceramics and textiles to architecture, animation, and metal arts. The new 82,305-square-foot building was designed as a creative ecosystem where disciplines can interact and overlap. It features moder... More

Project • By C.F. Møller Architects • Hospitals

Tampere Psychiatric Clinic

In the city of Tampere, Finland, a forward-looking psychiatric clinic is providing a beneficial healing environment for patients and favourable workplace for staff. Designed by Danish architectural studio C.F. Møller Architects in collaboration with Finnish studio ARCO Architecture Company, the Tampere Psychiatric Clinic is part of Tampere University Hospital. Located on the edge of the hospital campus, the psychiatric clinic blends with the surrounding woodland, offering a peaceful and therapeutic atmosphere. More than a stand-alone clinic in the woods, it is thoughtfully embedded in the wider hospital infrastructure: an underground tunnel connects Tampere Psychiatric Clinic to the main Tampere University Hospital, improving operat... More
Carr completes robust and breathable commercial building in Melbourne
Rory Gardiner

News • News • 5 Jul 2024

Carr completes robust and breathable commercial building in Melbourne

Melbourne-based architecture and interior design studio Carr has completed a robust and breathable commercial building in Collingwood, an inner suburb of Melbourne, Australia. The design of “116 Rokeby” echoes the area’s industrial materiality combined with a pragmatic approach to sustainability. The building’s beautifully brutal facade with its strong architectural repetition is both utilitarian and refined.  Rory Gardiner Carr Collingwood has a history of art and creativity that dates back to the early 20th century. Once home to warehouses and factories, providing creative minds with affordable spaces in which to work and live, the area’s gradual gentrification has been shaped by its a... More

Project • By Ikeda Yukie Ono Toshiharu Architects • Private Houses

terraced house

On a sloped plot of land in Yokohama, houses tower over the retaining wall on southern edge. On the eastern edge, a house juts against the site. In the winter, there is little sunlight, especially on the ground floor. Therefore, we designed a house that maximized the comfort of each season by setting the sunniest second floor as the "winter living room" and part of the cool shadowy first floor as the "summer living room".  koichi Torimura koichi Torimura Facing the southeast, which has the most sunshine, we arranged three floors that rise like terraces toward the light. It is in this direction that we placed the “winter living room” to take advantage of this most effective light. The living room reflects our comp... More

Project • By Ikeda Yukie Ono Toshiharu Architects • Private Houses

sunbrella house

an ideal site was found in the Tokyo suburb. This site was perched on the hill surrounded by natural landscape and afforded pleasant views; a mountain to the south and preserved forest to the north and east.  Koichi Torimura Koichi Torimura Koichi Torimura The two main requirements for their house were; to enjoy, within a sense of protection, the surrounding nature as well as to benefit from a structure that moderated climatic variations in a sustainable way. The new home was to be a cozy place, that would facilitate their transition from urban to country dwelling.  Koichi Torimura Koichi Torimura Considerations of vehicular access, forest preservation and the contour-topography resulted in the hous... More

Project • By MorinLauzé • Private Houses

Résidence Creelman

Cette résidence conçue selon les principes Passive House verra le jour en Alberta en 2023.  À l'intérieur, notre mandat était de créer des espaces personnalisés aux clients tout en mettant de l'avant la signature architecturale du bâtiment. Le plancher étant en béton, l'intégration du bois aux murs et sur le mobilier sur mesure apporte de la chaleur à l'ambiance. Morin Lauzé Morin Lauzé Le point focal dans la cuisine : une tuile en fines baguettes vertes faite à la main. En plus de cette touche de couleur, l'escalier colimaçon de métal bleu menant au bureau vient contraster avec le reste de l'espace plus neut... More

Project • By Leonardo Llamas • Apartments

Colón 11

The project in question is a rehabilitation of an old known hotel in the center of the city of Vigo, the Hotel Galicia. It consists of eight luxury homes, three of 226m2, four of 166m2 and one of more than 320m2, and which also has semi-automatic parking on its ground floor and cellar per floor in the basement. According to the calculations made for the passivhaus certification, the demand for heating is 12kWh/m2y and for cooling 5kWh/m2y. All these resustados have been collected by agreeing the previous study of the solar incidence on the building and its design.  The applied sustainability strategies are associated with the passivhaus principles:   1.     Isolation. The insulation towards the west façade co... More