Description

Overview: Discover how Passive House can support our children through projects in Washington State & British Columbia.

Presentation 1:

Witset Indigenous Youth Healing Lodge

Presented by Andrew Peel, Peel Passive House

The Witset First Nation addressed the legacy of multigenerational trauma produced by the Canadian Residential School System’s atrocities by creating a Youth Healing Lodge for the children of residential school survivors and their families. The owners saw the Passive House Standard as critical—while emphasizing culturally significant materials, symbols, and function by incorporating community needs like a communal kitchen, dining areas, and a smudging room—to achieve the objective of providing a healthy indoor environment that supports healing, and making the project financially sustainable with low operating costs.

Presentation 2:

From Airtight to All-In: When Performance Enables Purpose

Presented by Mike Fowler, Mithun

Passive House, at its best, is a foundational platform for holistic, transformative design. The award-winning Upper School project at The Bush School in Seattle, Washington, exemplifies this potential by connecting high performance with community, ecology, and human development. Attendees will gain practical guidance on fostering collaborative team environments and applying transferable systems thinking to projects of any scale.

1.25 AIA & 1 PHI CEUs

Moderated by Sarah Smiley Smith, Yale University

Learning Objectives:

1. Identify how traditional Indigenous culture and Passive House goals align.
2. Explore how to incorporate culturally significant features and functionality while not compromising on Passive House requirements.
3. Investigate how systems-driven design decisions can generate outcomes beyond energy performance and savings, including equity, ecological health, resilience, and well-being.
4. Apply transferable systems principles and tools from the case study to inform future Passive House projects at building, campus, and community scales.