A certified Passive House in Santa Rosa, Calif., designed by Signum Architecture to replace a structure lost in the 2017 Tubbs Fire, has recently been completed, the design firm announced. Signum partner and co-founder Jarrod Denton — a pioneering expert in sustainable, high-efficiency design and one of the earliest certified Passive House consultants in the United States — led the design team for the project, built by Wright Residential Construction.
Built to a strict budget, the home demonstrates that highly sustainable, resilient design and construction is achievable for a broad range of homeowners, Signum said, and highlights the positive impact of the Passive House technologies on the value of the completed structure, making it eligible for benefits such as the Department of Energy’s Zero Energy Ready Homes program.
Passive House is a set of next-generation sustainable design principles, considered the most rigorous voluntary energy-based standard in the design and construction industry today. Consuming up to 90% less heating and cooling energy than conventional buildings, and applicable to almost any building type or design, the Passive House high-performance building standard is the only internationally recognized, proven, science-based energy standard delivering this level of performance.
The essence of the design was to distill the home down to a simple set of forms. A mono-pitched, offset gable roof echoes the street’s slope, and the 3,250-square-foot home is arranged around a central courtyard, with kitchen, dining and living spaces aligned along the rear facade, a guest bedroom and downstairs office facing the street, and additional bedrooms above.
