Trilobite Design

Passive house and sustainable design is not a 'trend'. We have basic building science available to live and work in safe, comfortable, buildings that use less energy. Let's build more!

The passive house trend is booming On the morning of June 7, 2023, New York City woke to a sky of orange haze as the smoke from Canadian wildfires blew in from hundreds of miles away. It was a health hazard - city authorities said the air quality had not been as bad since the 1960s. That day, Chad Dickerson, a former CEO of Etsy, put...

Every day is a great day to open the windows in a especially when the weather is nice!
Good design can promote cool cross breezes on warm sunny days like today.

Construction has started on this retrofit. We've stripped the existing home down to the structure, and are beginning to add elements for an airtight, insulated shell. Check out those nice, deep joists on the roof, ready to hold lots of insulation.

Ideation session! Sketching some new massing options on the whiteboard. Hilly sites are a regular thing near .

Prepping a site for some Geotechnical Engineering work.

This would be an incredible investment in safe and affordable housing for everyone.
Let's make it happen and make it sustainable!

AOC Proposes $30 Billion Social Housing Authority Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s far-reaching bill in Congress would create a public alternative to private developers, in a bid to fill the immense affordable housing need.

The Trilobite Design work plan for the rest of the year. Busy designing energy efficient buildings!
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Passive houses are designed to stay comfortable all year round, helping to mitigate extreme temperatures both during winter and summer. This sustainable resilience saves energy costs, too!

Biked to a site visit today. 🚲💚

Kate Wagner's article is a roundabout treatise on how architecture CAN assist with humans dealing with the changing climate. While you can buy thermal leggings and a hundred space heaters, the solution is not abstract concepts and absurd floating cities. It's through the basics of passive house design - good insulation, air-tight construction, and energy-efficient heating and cooling systems.

After Comfort: A User’s Guide - Kate Wagner - Heating the House The twentieth century electric revolution came and went, the choice was made to trade in one form of burning for another, and, at some point, the coal-burning stove was exchanged for the gas-powered radiators we have today.

So one of our favorite photos of the

I'm hanging at the Midwest Sustainability Summit today and speaking at the 2:30 afternoon brief (about passive house and sustainable construction) . Find me and say hello if you're here!

Join me on Thursday May 2 at the Midwest Sustainability Summit. I'll be onstage as part of the Afternoon Breakout session 1, introducing folks to passive house design and pitching a new development model for sustainable housing.

Acoustics + lighting?
I've been searching for good products that combine these two necessities for a long time. Tried lots of different manufacturers over the years. Recently specified these beauties, but they are _still_ not as good as advertised.
I'm probably going to need to custom design-build something in the future to get both the lighting control and acoustic absorption done right (and will likely be cheaper!)

3d printed and milled sign for the office

Spent time this week assisting with technical commissioning and checking out new audio equipment in the studio. This room is designed specifically for music mastering and will be the new permanent workspace for an accomplished local engineer.

Yesterday morning was a good time to drive around and spot buildings that were leaking a lot of heat energy. The air temp was right at 32F, and we had a very light snow flurry right around dawn. So the snow stuck to roofs, and then melted off in patterns showing where the heat was escaping through the construction fastest.
Two things cause this: poor insulation and air exfiltration. Both of these issues cause heat energy to move from inside to outside.

We built Cincinnati's first certified Passive House, and would love to talk to more people about sustainable buildings.
Send a note to Scott if you are thinking about building a new home or project.

This Maine home can stay 70 degrees without a furnace, even when it's freezing outside With extra insulation and lots of sun, a passive house in the town of Hope is able to maintain an indoor temperature of around 70 degrees without the use of a furnace.