Overview: While luxury and affordable housing have found their groove, let’s track down the “missing middle” and the business case for it.
Presentation 1: Filling the Missing Middle: Architect-Led Development for Attainable Passive House
Description: Passive House works. The harder problem is making it attainable for middle-income buyers in the communities that need it most. This session follows pHdesign’s live attempt — a PHI low energy home near Ellenville, NY where the architects became equity partners and took on the developer role to test what it actually costs, and what it takes, to deliver high-performance middle income housing.
Learning Objectives:
- Analyze architect-led development and equity participation as mechanisms for delivering Passive House housing.
- Compare prefabricated and site-built delivery models using real financial and construction outcomes.
- Apply procurement strategies leveraging local suppliers and uptraining labor to achieve high performance targets.
- Identify actionable steps for expanding high-performance housing into underserved middle-income markets.
Presentation 2: Designing the Bottom Line: Why Passive House Architect-Developers are Embracing Prefab and the “Missing Middle”.
Description: As developers often lack more ambitious energy-efficient building strategies, it is the architect-developer who is emerging as a new catalyst for urban densification, Passive House quality, and good design. And where labor shortages and site experience are limited, they are leveraging prefabricated panels. Small multifamily developments in Washington and British Columbia demonstrate this emerging paradigm’s ability to serve the “missing middle.”
Learning Objectives:
- Analyze the socio-economic drivers—including the housing crisis and climate emergency—that necessitate urban densification by comparing the unique development hurdles of building small-scale multi-family vs. mixed-use commercial typologies in dense urban environments.
- Explore strategies for maintaining the Passive House Standard across different scales while balancing strict thermal performance requirements with the financial constraints of both residential 4-plex and mixed-use commercial developments.
- Describe the necessity of the coordination between architects, General Contractors, and 3D modeling teams required to synchronize low-carbon panel fabrication with on-site assembly and timeline management.
- Identify specific tactics to optimize cost, accelerate construction speed, and ensure the overall feasibility of architect-led high-performance projects.
CEUs:
Upon completion of all modules a Certificate of Attendance will be automatically issued for AIA & PHI credit. Please self report to both AIA & PHI using the codes provided.
