Sixteen years in the UK Royal Navy not only gave John Palmer a sounds background in engineering, he also gained leadership and management experience within a large and structured institution. When he made the decision to leave his Commander role, he retrained and applied his technical and management skills to building and then energy efficiency. It was only a matter of time that he came across and then fully embraced the building science of Passive House . In 2018 he left his role as Managing Di...
May 10, 2021•54 min•Season 1Ep. 38
On Episode 37 of the Passive House Podcast, guest co-hosts Mary James and Ilka Cassidy interview Katie Faulkner, founder of WestFaulkner , an office with a mission for sustainable design. She is also a director at PT-Tech, a division of Placetailor in Boston whose initial focus is on the design and prefabrication of retrofit panels for triple decker homes. Katie has been working as an architect for more than 20 years and was named to the American Institute of Architects College of Fellows in 202...
May 03, 2021•1 hr 3 min•Season 1Ep. 37
On Episode 36 of the Passive House Podcast. cohost Matthew Cutler-Welsh interviews Robyn Wark, Manager of Advanced Demand Side Management at BC Hydro about the groundbreaking Energy Step Code in British Columbia. Robyn is a sustainability strategist, partnership builder, and coach on low carbon communities. Her sustainability work has won awards from Real Estate Foundation of BC, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, the Canadian Institute of Planners, and the Planning Institute of British ...
Apr 26, 2021•55 min•Season 1Ep. 36
In Episode 35 of the Passive House Podcast , cohost Zack Semke interviews architect Tom Eisele , recently of the New York City Mayor’s Office of Resiliency, and current policy advisor with New York Passive House. Zack and Tom discuss the momentous New York City Local Law 97 which caps greenhouse gas emissions for all buildings in New York that are 25,000 or larger—over 50,000 buildings. The caps step down to 80% reduction in GHGs by 2050, with hefty fines to be levied on building owners for buil...
Apr 19, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Season 1Ep. 35
In Episode 34 of the Passive House Podcast , cohost Zack Semke interviews Passive House policy leader and accelerator Beverly Craig , Senior Project Manager of Low and Moderate Income Programs at Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (Mass CEC). Zack and Beverly discuss the pivotal role that policy progress can play in spurring widespread adoption of Passive House design and construction. Beverly shares her firsthand experience instigating rapid Passive House uptake in her state, spurred along by pr...
Apr 12, 2021•57 min•Season 1Ep. 34
Ya’el Santopinto is an architect and associate at ERA Architects , where she leads ERA’s affordable housing retrofit practice. She is also the director of research and partnerships with the Tower Renewal Partnership, a non-profit sister organization to ERA that advocates for supportive policy frameworks around the preservation of Canada’s affordable apartment housing supply. Ya’el is the project architect on the inspiring Passive House retrofit of the Ken Soble apartment tower in Hamilton, Ontar...
Apr 05, 2021•58 min•Season 1Ep. 33
Kate Nason is a certified passive house designer in Melbourne, Australia. She works for the international environmental design consultancy, Atelier Ten. She's also a director of partnerships and major events on the board of the Australian Passive House Association and a part-time tutor at the University of Melbourne. Having had various architectural roles since graduating from her master's degree, Kate has collected a range of experiences, including working on some of Australia's earliest Passiv...
Mar 29, 2021•46 min•Season 1Ep. 32
Most Australians who know a bit about Passive House will know a bit about Clare Parry . If they haven’t met her personally, they will have been impacted by her leadership. In this interview, Clare shares with Passive House Podcast cohost Matthew Cutler-Welsh how she had to travel to New Zealand to attend Passive House training because there wasn’t any available in Australia when she first became interested. And there wasn’t any Australia-based Passive House training until Clare herself set it up...
Mar 22, 2021•45 min•Season 1Ep. 31
Laura Nettleton is the founder of Thoughtful Balance , an architectural and consulting firm based in Pittsburgh devoted to cutting-edge sustainable and high-performance design solutions. The firm has pioneered some of the most significant Passive House retrofit projects in the United States. Laura is dedicated to the idea that architecture should be simple, affordable, and available to everyone. She is actively involved in green initiatives in Pittsburgh, and in spreading the word about Passive ...
Mar 15, 2021•54 min•Season 1Ep. 30
In celebration of International Women’s Day 2021, we have something special in store for listeners of the Passive House Podcast. Guest cohosts Mary James and Ilka Cassidy launch their once-a-month series of interviews with women leaders and practitioners in Passive House with an interview with Nina Sharifi and Gabrielle Brainard. Mary James is Passive House Accelerator’s Director of Publications and the driving force behind Passive House Accelerator Magazine (formerly Passive House Buildings Mag...
Mar 08, 2021•56 min•Season 1Ep. 29
Talina Edwards is a leader in regenerative architecture and Passive House design in Australia. She’s a leader of Australian Architects Declare as well as a board member of Australian Passive House Association. In 2013 she established her architectural studio, Talina Edwards Architecture, which has gone on to win numerous sustainable design awards, most recently for the striking Owl Woods Passive House project. In this episode of the Passive House Podcast, Talina joins cohost Matthew-Cutler Welsh...
Mar 01, 2021•1 hr•Season 1Ep. 28
Passive House podcaster extraordinaire and personality Ben Adam-Smith of House Planning Help joins Passive House Podcast cohost Matthew Cutler-Welsh for an entertaining conversation about how Ben came to his focus on Passive House, his burgeoning communications treasure trove at House Planning Help's "The Hub", his observations about Passive House adoption in the UK, and the secrets behind his Passive House communications superpowers. Ben started his career in radio and TV production, including ...
Feb 22, 2021•49 min•Season 1Ep. 27
You may know Prudence Ferreira through her role as cohost of Passive House Accelerator’s Global Passive House Happy Hour. Or perhaps you’ve been her student, learning the ins and outs of Passive House design and building science in one of Prudence’s many teaching engagements. She’s one of North America’s top Passive House innovators and a global leader in high-performance building practice. Now based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, she’s Senior Associate with the Carbon Neutral Group at BR+A Consul...
Feb 15, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Season 1Ep. 26
Sian Taylor was one of the first certified Passive House designers in New Zealand and has played a pivotal role in Passive House adoption there. She first trained as an architect in the United Kingdom, at the University of Wales in Cardiff. She currently lives in Otago, where she started her practice, Team Green Architects . Her architectural practice has helped show a pathway for fusing high-performance building with design excellence and has helped raise the profile of Passive House design and...
Feb 08, 2021•1 hr 7 min•Season 1Ep. 25
Anton Dobrevski was born and raised in Bulgaria, where he says that houses are generally not built well or well insulated. Nevertheless, Anton was introduced to Passive House at an early age by his father, a pioneering Passive House builder in Bulgaria. Upon graduating from high school, Anton moved to the Netherlands to study architecture at Delft University of Technology. During one of his first assignments as a student, his class was advised to follow the Passive House standard. While eager to...
Feb 01, 2021•41 min•Season 1Ep. 24
This week’s Passive House Podcast serves double-duty: first, as a fascinating conversation with the accomplished Passive House architect and deep thinker Dennis Wedlick; and second, as a preview to this Tuesday’s (January 26) webcast produced by Dennis on behalf of AIANY CRAN that will feature a “mini film festival” of residential Passive House practice from four teams, followed by a panel discussion moderated by the Accelerator’s Zack Semke. Dennis is the founder of BarlisWedlick Architects, a ...
Jan 25, 2021•1 hr•Season 1Ep. 23
While Brett Seriani began his career in Canada, he is now a Passive House pioneer in Australia. Before becoming a Certified Passive House Designer, Brett trained and qualified as both a structural engineer and an architect. With this powerhouse of experience and knowledge, he is well placed to offer a range of technical design services through his company, Seriani Designs. In this episode of the Passive House Podcast, Brett joins cohost Matthew Cutler-Welsh to discuss his relatively recent disco...
Jan 18, 2021•43 min•Season 1Ep. 22
Lois Arena is one of North America’s top Passive House practitioners and has worked on many of the continent’s most significant Passive House buildings. In this episode of the Passive House Podcast, Lois joins cohost Zack Semke to discuss her journey to Passive House as well as to offer a teaser for the Global Passive House Happy Hour presentation about VRF lessons learned on January 20. The conversation takes us from her days as a remodeling contractor, her work as a building engineering resear...
Jan 11, 2021•36 min•Season 1Ep. 21
Daniel Kress is a prolific Passive House educator, having trained over half of Australia’s certified Passive House professionals. In this episode of the Passive House Podcast, our first of 2021, Daniel joins cohost Matthew Cutler-Welsh to discuss his work at Smart Plus Academy, the educational consultancy that Daniel founded and directs, as well as his work promulgating Passive House in Australia and beyond. The conversation takes us from his days as a carpenter in Germany, to his graduate work ...
Jan 04, 2021•59 min•Season 1Ep. 20
In this episode of the Passive House Podcast Sangeetha Sambandam joins podcast co-host Zack Semke to talk about her journey to Passive House and the major projects she has underway. Sangeetha, a designer at WRT in Philadelphia, completed her architectural training in India with an undergraduate background in physics. After working in Sri Lanka and India she moved to Philadelphia where her interest in the sustainable side of architecture took off. Sangeetha is certified as a Passive House designe...
Dec 28, 2020•45 min•Season 1Ep. 19
In 2014, Luc Plowman’s consulting practice had just 2 Passive House projects on the books. Now, just over 6 years later, he has 40 underway. He’s witnessed Australia’s Passive House growth firsthand. Luc is the founder and director of Detail Green in Beechworth, Australia, and one of a small cadre of Passive House certifiers in the country. Before his work at Detail Green, Luc worked as a senior sustainability engineer and project engineer. In this episode of Passive House Podcast, co-host Matth...
Dec 21, 2020•45 min•Season 1Ep. 17
Julie Torres Moskovitz , principal at Fete Nature Architecture, joins Passive House Podcast intern/producer Sydney Fishman and co-host Zack Semke on this week’s episod. Bringing refreshing perspectives to the table, Julie talks with the co-hosts about thermal imaging as a guide to practice, resilience and social justice, blower door testing during construction, and more. Julies portfolio is expansive, including new construction to residential retrofits, FEMA flood resiliency and non-profit proje...
Dec 14, 2020•58 min•Season 1Ep. 17
In the run-up to this week’s Passive House Canada Summit (Dec 8-10), Passive House Podcast co-host Zack Semke interviews Vancouver-based Cillian Collins about his path to Passive House, the groundbreaking Passive House projects Cillian has in the works, and the Passive House educational programming on tap at the Summit. ( Registration for the Summit is open until 12pm Pacific/3pm Eastern today, Monday, December 7.) Cillian is a Senior Architect with Perkins&Will Architects and a Certified Pa...
Dec 07, 2020•50 min•Season 1Ep. 16
In this week's episode of the Passive House Podcast, host Matthew Cutler Welsh interviews Andy Marlow . Andy is passionate about design, sustainability and affordability. He trained as an architect at the University of New South Wales in Australia and throughout his professional career, he’s been working to incorporate ideas about sustainability into his work. As a Director at Envirotecture, Andy has been influential in providing design and consulting services for people who want buildings that ...
Nov 30, 2020•1 hr 2 min•Season 1Ep. 15
This week host of the Passive House Podcast Zack Semke interviews Tessa Bradley (previously Smith), a pioneer of Passive House in the Pacific Northwest. In her 20s Tessa became co-owner of the Artisans Group, at the time a design-build firm, now a design-only firm. Artisans Group quickly became a leading designer and builder of beautiful, modernist, yet financially accessible Passive House homes in the Northwest, winning many design awards in the process. Tessa has won multiple Best Project by a...
Nov 23, 2020•54 min•Season 1Ep. 14
In this episode, Passive House Podcast host Matthew Cutler-Welsh interviews Peter Bielski , owner of Ethos Homes in New Zealand, about his experience building single family Passive House projects in a construction industry landscape of bare minimum building energy code requirements. Peter cut his teeth in construction in Germany, where he built homes with a major prefabricated homes operation that delivered over 900 homes per year. When he returned to New Zealand, Peter initially experimented wi...
Nov 16, 2020•44 min•Season 1Ep. 13
In this episode, Passive House Podcast co-host Zack Semke interviews Dr. Diana Ürge-Vorsatz of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. They dive into the findings of Ürge-Vorsatz's recent paper, "Advances Toward a Net-Zero Global Building Sector", including implications for both new construction and deep energy retrofits as parts of the transition to zero emissions in buildings. Visit the Accelerator's Week in Preview article for links to most of the events that Zack mentions near the end...
Nov 09, 2020•52 min•Season 1Ep. 12
In this episode, Passive House Podcast host Matthew Cutler-Welsh interviews Ken Levenson, Co-Founder of 475 High Performance Building Supply and Executive Director of the North American Passive House Network (NAPHN) . The conversation explores Ken’s early architecture practice in New York in the 80s and 90s, his climate awakening after watching “An Inconvenient Truth,” and his later discovery of Passive House in 2009. This discovery fueled Ken’s drive to co-found 475 with Floris Keverling Buisma...
Nov 02, 2020•57 min•Season 1Ep. 11
In this episode, Passive House Podcast co-host Zack Semke interviews Kimberly Llewellyn of Mitsubishi Electric Trane HVAC US , a founding sponsor of Passive House Accelerator. An engineer by training, Kimberly spent 5 years with Positive Energy, a highly regarded engineering and consulting firm that specializes in Passive House work as part of a broad portfolio. Zack and Kimberly discuss her journey to Passive House, the "in the dirt" training she received while in the field at Positive Energy, ...
Oct 26, 2020•44 min•Season 1Ep. 10
In this episode, Passive House Podcast host Matthew Cutler-Welsh interviews Harley Weston of Solaire Properties . Harley spent twelve years drilling and exploring for minerals beneath the earth, mostly around the North Eastern part of Australia. When he wasn’t operating a drill himself, he was managing people who did. Mineral exploration is big business in Australia. It’s made a lot of people very wealthy, but doesn’t exactly conjure up images of sustainability, healthy and well being or even en...
Oct 19, 2020•50 min•Season 1Ep. 9
