M741 / Bed-Stuy Passive House
As the home for CO Adaptive’s founders, the renovation was driven both by their professional desire to build a project that was aligned with their goals around energy efficiency and reuse, and met the personal needs of their growing family.
This project was CO Adaptive’s first Passive House retrofit of an old Brooklyn townhouse. Conceived as a two-family house, it allows Bobby and Ruth to share the Passive House living experience with out-of-towners, alongside the flexibility to have additional space for family and friends when needed.
The upper duplex has three bedrooms on the second floor, with their kitchen and living room on the parlor level, alongside a new stair that gives access to the rear yard from the kitchen and dining area. A new powder room and laundry closet was added into existing interstitial closet space on the parlor level, and the sole heating and cooling system for the duplex is housed above those utility spaces.
Upstairs, in addition to the two bedrooms, there are two clean wet rooms and a separate powder room; a very Austrian way to conceive of bathroom spaces that is informed by Ruth’s history of growing up in Vienna.
The garden level unit has two bedrooms and one bathroom, and a hatch door into the cellar that allows the unit entry to feel generous and spacious.
The design contrasts the reuse of many original elements of the house with clean maple-ply details at doors and windows throughout, and a bright color palette which brings a contemporary feeling to the old house.
The envelope was substantially insulated on the interior of the building and new triple-pane windows were installed. Operable exterior shades were tucked behind the existing brownstone, allowing them to disappear from view when open and mitigate solar heat gain when closed. Together these interventions keep the building cool with minimal mechanical intervention, even during the ever-hotter summers of New York City.
Natural gas was removed from the building and replaced with solar-powered electricity. A solar array was installed on the roof to offset the electrical load of the building and power and electric vehicle charging station.
All new plumbing, electrical and ventilation systems were located within an interior central spine from which it branched out to service each floor. This strategy minimized the penetrations in the air tight membrane which is critical to maintaining the performance of a Passive House.
To preserve the existing character of the building, all of the ornate 19th-century woodwork was removed for later refinishing and reinstallation, and stored in a tent that was put up in the rear yard. The plasterwork was preserved wherever possible or carefully surveyed and recreated. Though they worked with a General Contractor for the construction, Ruth and Bobby did all of the ordering and coordinating of material purchases for the house, and led the strategies around material reuse—which gave CO Adaptive a taste for sequencing this coordination long before the launch of their Build Arm.
This was CO Adaptive’s first Passive House renovation, and as such, set many standards that CO Adaptive still looks to now. As the founders’ home, it has also become a showcase of sorts—allowing Ruth and Bobby to give tours and exhibit its features. The garden level apartment is listed on Airbnb as a long term rental, and as such, becomes available to individuals who want to experience Passive House living.
Featured in:
- A 19th-Century Home in Brooklyn Gets a 21st-Century Makeover, The New York Times
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A Passive House Grows in Brooklyn, Architectural Digest
- CO Adaptive Architecture Turns a 100-Year-Old Brooklyn Brownstone Into an Energy-Efficient Passive House, Interior Design Homes
- Macon Street Passive House, Architect Magazine
- Five Construction Details to Reduce Embodied and Operational Carbon, Architect Magazine
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2020 BKLYN Design Awards, Sustainability Award
- 2019 NYCxDESIGN Awards Winner, Kitchen & Bath Category
MEP Engineering: ABS Engineering
Structural Engineering: Bergan Design Lab Engineering
Solar Panel Installation: Brooklyn SolarWorks
Kitchen Millwork: Reform + IKEA
Wood Flooring: Madera
Windows: Optiwin
Exterior Shading: HELLA
Location: Brooklyn, NY
Type: Residential
Values: Creative Reuse, Healthy Materials, Energy Efficiency
Finished Photographs: Peter Dressel & Emily Gilbert