Energy & Passive House

Adrian and Ian are Certified European Passive House Designers which facilitates the ability to deliver new and retrofit Passive House certified projects.

Not every project is suitable for Passive House Certification and equally important to us is the ability to apply our specilaist knowledge from an informed position as Passive House Designers. 

This allows us to pursue ‘Fabric First’ principles, wherein we design the building fabric to work hard in order to keep as much energy as possible inside and to take as much free energy as possible from the sun.

A significant co-factor is the stewardship and responsibility of what and how we specify building materials and the opportunity to ‘lock in’ carbon to the building fabric, and in the case of natural materials the ability to introduce sequestration of material to actually produce carbon negative elements of buildings.

Ultimately we aim to make joyful and comfortable internal environments that compliment the architecture, where minimal human and energy input is required to retain those comfortable and healthy internal environments.
This translates into a minimal carbon footprint and accordingly happier and more comfortable and efficient operating buildings.

Passive House also facilitates compliance with the Scottish Building Regulations Section 6 (Energy) and also Section 7 (Sustainability) due to the very precise and finely tuned nature of the certified designs.

Considering Energy, Conservation and Sustainability it has become clear to us all rely upon each other, to make our existing buildings better and to make new buildings the best they can be.

Adrian is a Section 6 Certifier for the Scottish Government Building Standards Division which allows certification of Section 6 (Energy) aspects of building warrant applicationsz

This knowledge provides us with a closed loop in house testing and iteration facility where we can test the performance, details, operation and running cost of our buildings as we design them.

Section  6 certification capacity dovetails with Passive House Certification in the knowledge to design, certify and apply advanced knowledge on energy and sustainability.

Adrian has been a studio design tutor and lecturer at the Mackintosh School of Architecture since 2006 and delivers a focused course on the Principles of Building which brings together all of the ideas of architecture becoming better because of, and not inspite of it’s technical, energy or sustainability credentials or regulation.