Passive House Sound Studio
Location: Brooklyn NY, Red Hook
Mechanical Engineering: Jordan Goldman, Zero Energy Design
Passivehouse Consultant, Energy Modeling: Jordan Goldman, Zero Energy Design
Structural Engineering: Madsen Engineering
Acoustical: Marko Stamenovich
Located in Red Hook, Brooklyn’s notorious decayed port, this modest renovation proposes to transform an anonymous two-story concrete-block box into the first mixed-use building in NYC to meet the most rigorous low-energy construction certification in the world – the Passive House Certification from the PHI in Darmstadt, Germany. Despite the constraints of working with an existing building built tight into NYC’s dense urban fabric, the result is projected to use 90% less energy to heat and cool than a new building built to code.
This accomplishment is the result of unusually rigorous attention to the construction of the building’s envelope – its top, bottom, and sides made into a continuous ‘thermos’ which holds even the tiniest bit of heat all day. For this project, the building’s energy demands will be reduced so much that they can be entirely met by a rooftop solar array, making the project “net-zero” within the limited space of just its own footprint. It will be quiet and comfortable, with fresh air year round, and will cost the owner almost nothing to use.
It is fitting that this forward-looking, high-performance, all-electric building will house a sound studio dedicated to electronic music and digital sound art. In both function and expression, the architecture will be part of the most modern expression of perhaps the oldest human art. Today, when even acoustic instruments are rarely heard except through electronic means, the work made here will have a voice whether or not the rest of the world has power. Through this building, it will literally be made from the sun.