In order to create a passive building – one that requires little in the way of cooling or heating – the interior must be as self-contained as possible, pressurized and meticulously sealed. Architects at work on a high rise dormitory as part of Cornell Tech’s new Roosevelt Island campus are still figuring out exactly how to apply that to 26 stories.
“We’re beta testing this,” said architect Blake Middleton. Cornell Tech cut down on costs by using windows slightly smaller than those usually found in luxury condos and fabricating the thick (14 inch) walls in a factory. The second-largest passive building, a 20-story low-rise in Vienna, was much more expensive.
This 26-Story High Rise Will Be The Biggest Passive Building In The World
Most buildings that meet the rigorous passive house standards are single-family homes. “It’s been an exploratory process for us, partly because nobody has done anything of this scale,” says Blake Middleton, partner at Handel Architects, the firm that designed the building for Cornell Tech’s new campus on New York’s Roosevelt Island …
Filed Under: Infrastructure