For one German city, architectural design and modern styling are overlooked—it’s truly what’s inside that counts.

Located outside Frankfurt, the city of Darmstadt is pioneering the way for passive house technology, a revolution in building design providing a home with exceptional efficiency standards, preventing drafts, cold floors, and other variable conditions.

Using an ingenious central ventilation system that requires outside air to purify through HEPA filters prior to reaching the home interior, the warm air leaving the home passes side-by-side with the clean, cool air coming in, exchanging heat with 90 percent efficiency. Using ultra-thick insulation and complex doors and windows, an architect engineers a home encased in an airtight shell, to prevent heat escaping and cold creeping in.

“The myth before was that to be warm you had to have heating. Our goal is to create a warm house without energy demand, says Wolfgang Hasper, an engineer at the Passivhaus Institut in Darmstadt, Germany. “This is not about wearing thick pullovers, turning the thermostat down and putting up with drafts. It’s about being comfortable with less energy input, and we do this by recycling heating.”

So on a cold evening in Germany, how much energy are we really talking about using?—A passive house will obtain all the heat and hot water needed from the amount of energy it would take to run a hair dryer.

Even though the first passive house was built in Germany in 1991, language barriers slowed diffusion of the idea, and the vast majority of these homes are built in German-speaking countries. But popularity is dynamic—California architect Nabih Tahan, who worked in Austria for 11 years, is completing one of the first passive houses in the United States. Tahan heads a group of 70 Bay Area architects and engineers who are diligent in encouraging wide acceptance of passive house standards. Tahan says, “This is a recipe for energy that makes sense to people. Why not reuse this heat you get for free?”

Find out how architect Nabih Tahan remodeled his family’s home with passive technology via this link. To read more about the strategy behind the Passive House, delve into Nabih Tahan’s website for more information.

View The New York Times article dubbed "No Furnaces but Heat Aplenty in ‘Passive Houses’" via this link.

—Holly Marie Busacca

Image at right courtesy Nabih Tahan Architects—Image represents Tahan’s remodeled passive house in Berkeley, Calif.