More Green Building News
The North American Passive House Network (NAPHN) plans to convene on October 1 and 2, 2015, in Vancouver, British Columbia. Thirty speakers will discuss case studies of a variety of building types and climate zones, organizers said.
The keynote speaker will be Diana Urge-Vorsatz, the director for the Centre for Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Policy Central, and the lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.
This year’s conference will pay particular attention to large Passivhaus structures. Among the scheduled speakers: Sonia Zouari, project architect for the 42-unit Salus Clementine project in Ontario, the first social housing project in Canada seeking Passivhaus certification; Dieter Herz of Herz & Lang in Germany, winners of the Passive House Award for Office and Special Use Building; and Scott Kennedy, principal of Cornerstone Architecture, who will talk about a 95-unit apartment building due for construction in Vancouver in September.
More than three dozen panel discussions and workshops have been scheduled on a variety of topics, and project tours are planned for Passivhaus projects in Whistler and Vancouver.
NAPHN is a coalition of regional and state Passivhaus groups aligned with the Passivhaus Institut in Darmstadt, Germany.
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2 Comments
I am writing a history of
I am writing a history of glass windows and wondered if anyone could point me towards information about who thought up, and when, the solar gain energy benefits were first thought of
Response to Charles Murphy
Charles,
Before there was any window glass -- before there were houses -- before there were humans -- many creatures, from lizards to cats, realized that lying in the sun feels good and warms you up on a cold morning. That's solar gain.
After window glass was invented -- a few wealthy Romans may have had it, and eventually wealthy people in the late Middle Ages in Europe had it -- I'm sure that wealthy people realized that they could still warm themselves by sitting in the sun, indoors or out, because the heating rays provided by sunshine penetrate window glass.
This would have been expected, I'm sure. It would have been more startling to our medieval ancestors if sunshine that passed through window glass didn't warm them.
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