Category: Podcasts
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158: Why should we be watching China?
One of the most surprising aspects of the recent 20th International Passive House Conference in Darmstadt, was the Chinese presence. Elrond Burrell estimates that nearly 200 of the 1,000 delegates were from China. Why the sudden uptake of Passive House in Asia, and what does this mean for the rest of us? Elrond Burrell Elrond…
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157: Sustainable Landscapes with Hitesh Mehta
Hitesh Mehta I originally contacted Hitesh Mehta to talk about sustainable landscape architecture, but he offers a lot more than that. Hitesh has travelled the world advising and helping designers of ecolodges. He enjoys all aspects of architecture as well as photography, environmental planning and writing. To find out more about his recent work, visit…
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156: Why Passive House? With Dr Wolfgang Feist
I never intended for this to become a Passive House blog site, nor did I intend to become a Passive House expert. And I don’t think either of those two things have happened, yet. I have had a number of Passive House designers and product suppliers on the show and earlier this year I was…
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155: PrefabNZ CoLab2016
It’s tempting to say that Prefab’s time has come, but I don’t think this does justice to prefabricated building. As Pamela Bell has explained previously on the Home Style Green Podcast, Prefab is not new. But the enthusiasm shown during this week’s PrefabNZ CoLab event here in Auckland suggest that prefab will play an increasingly…
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154: Adaptive Architecture
For Matthew Baran of Baran Studio Architecture, California, Adaptive architecture means much more than just designing for the local climate. We create cities in places where maybe they’re not supposed to be. This, combined with continued pressure on natural resources and climate change creates a need for adaptive architecture. Matthew Baran Matthew was drawn to architecture…
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153: Simple is the New Smart Home
What makes a ‘smart home’? Paul Dowsett and his team at Sustainable.To are dedicate to creating affordable, healthy and energy efficient homes, because that’s what Paul believes is ‘the right thing to do’. I think that a pretty good definition for a ‘smart home’. And the best way to achieve it? Keep it simple. Simple…
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152: How to Select the Best LED Light
Remember when the main choice you had for light bulbs was 60 Watts or 100 Watts? Things have progressed a long way since then, and mostly for the better, especially when you consider that the average incandescent light bulb is only about 10% efficient. Most of the energy ends up as heat rather than light. Now we’ve…
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151: Passive House is Here
There’s so much that could be said about two days of great Passive House presentations in Melbourne, but I’ve challenged myself to boil it down to one point per presentation. If there was one takeaway from the second South Pacific Passive House Conference, it was that Passive House has arrived in the Southern Hemisphere…
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150: Energy Efficient Homes in Canterbury
Glenn Harley is a builder of energy efficient homes in Canterbury. After being attracted to the natural, healthy feel of strawbale construction, Glenn now produces high performance homes with lots of insulation and airtight envelopes. Among his recent achievements is building Christchurch’s first Passive House. The Cost of Building Glenn points to the cost of…
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149 Collective Carpentry
In the town of Invermere, about 3 hours west of Calgary in British Columbia, there’s a workshop where high performance, energy efficient homes are constructed all year round, regardless of the weather. The workshop is home to Collective Carpentry, a small but inspiring building company doing great things. Collective Carpentry When first got in touch,…