Dennis Wedlick, founder of BarlisWedlick Architects, presented on The Rural Build initiative, his firm’s ongoing partnership with the local Habitat for Humanity chapter in Columbia County, New York. The Rural Build is the firm’s constructive response to the question, How can Passive House be used to make rural communities more resilient?
Wedlick first walked us through his awakening to the heating and cooling energy savings that comes with a Passive House building, using the example of the firm’s redesigning one of their own projects, an A‑frame house. “The results were astounding—99% less energy for heating and 86% less energy for cooling,” he said, adding, “I had no idea how energy inefficient the original design was.”
He then brought that new-found knowledge to a Habitat project, reengineering what Habitat normally builds. Find out the lessons he learned from that first Passive House redesign and the subsequent iterations of their rural builds, each of which is helping a low-income family be lifted out of housing poverty, by listening here: