New York turns Passive
On June 16th, Cornell Tech held a groundbreaking ceremony on Roosevelt Island. While the event took place to announce Bloomberg Philanthropies $100Mil gift to the new campus, the "BOOM!" heard round the low-energy/high-performance world was news that the campus will have the world's tallest residential Passive House. Mayor Bill de Blasio, Cornell President David Skorton, and David Kramer, Principal of the Hudson companies, all spoke at length about the importance of making this building a Passive House. 475 High Performance Building Supply whittled the 1 hour plus ceremonial speeches down to a Video of 4 minutes plus. (Note: Mayor de Blasio's thanking "the Mayor" is referencing former NYC Mayor Bloomberg, seated just to his left).
Developed by the Hudson Companies in partnership with Related Companies, it was designed by New York City-based Handel Architects, with engineers BuroHappold, Passive House consultants Steven Winter Associates and Passive House Institute certifying organization, Passive House Academy. The high-rise will also be the tallest building on Cornell Tech's campus. Press reports can be found on the NYTimes and Green Building Advisor.
Big influence coming from Vienna's Passive House expertise
A big influence on the decission to Passive House Standard had Günter Lang, when he guided David Kramer to some Austrian Passive Houses in August 2013. Günter presented the office tower in from Raiffeissen which is the highest Passive House so far. He also showed the student housing in Gasgasse which is one of several projects of OeAD in Passive House Standard.
Finally Günter was also a key note speaker at the New York Passive House conference in 2014 where he presented "The Future is Passive: Big Buildings from Vienna to Beijing and beyond". There he could confince the rest of the project team from Passive House Standard even for such a big project.
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Infobox: Residential-high rise for new Roosevelt Island Campus / New York City 350 residences for students Building start June 2015 | Building finish 2017 |
Just days before the groundbreaking speech, Mayor de Blasio was awarded the first annual New York Passive House Hero Award at the well-attended NY15 Passive House Conference and Expo at the Metropolitan Pavilion on June 11. If Passive House can make it in New York, it can make it anywhere. And the world's tallest Passive House will be arriving on Roosevelt Island in only 2 years.