On 15 March, Michael Eliason will be presenting a session for the Passive House Network on optimization of Passive House buildings with Point Access Blocks – a trick from the way we used to build cities.
Discussions around urban morphology are not as robust in the Passive House community as they could be. Building form plays a significant role in the ease or difficulty of achieving Passive House performance, and so urban form – and how building codes work within them – plays an outsized role in optimization. One way to optimize buildings is to increase the amount of floor area in the same thermal envelope.
Point Access Blocks (single stair buildings) –the basic urban building block in most other countries – are one such method to achieve this. Eliason will discuss his report for the City of Vancouver on Point Access Blocks, which touches on how these issues are also interwoven with embodied carbon, climate adaptation, family-sized units, re-compaction, and improved quality of life.
More information and registration here.
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