As a member of the Active House Alliance, I was invited last March to speak at the EcoBuild World Conference in London. During the conference the Active House Network had a big presence to promote and discuss the different prototype homes around the world, including Active House USA. I was honored to speak about the economics of investing in high performance buildings, and gave a presentation on the Active House USA Prototype project we are building in Webster.
At the conference, the Active House booth displayed a series of posters featuring all of the Active House homes around the world. Seeing all of the different homes lined up, it truly was fascinating to see some many different design interpretations for each prototype-some were traditional, while others were ultra modern. Each home, however, is really a reflection of the country’s overarching architectural design ideas, and no matter how different they were designed, they all function at the upper levels of building performance. You can see what I mean by heading over to www.activehouse.info to see the other prototype homes around the world.
The unique challenge we are addressing with Active House USA versus other prototypes, is that we are being guided by the culture and well established architecture standards of Old Webster, while other Active House homes were designed to achieve the goals of the Active House specification.
In other words, we had to take traditional home design and make it an Active House. The result is a home that flows with and belongs among many of other homes in this Midwest neighborhood, but one that will be able to outperform its neighbors.
