Democratizing sustainable housing in Canada (part I)

Canada is losing the environmental fight. It joins the ever-growing ranks of wealthy countries unable to meet their Kyoto Protocol goals. Between 1990 and 2004, Canada increased green house gas (GHG) emissions by 22%, sparking this comment in 2006 from Environment Minister Rona Ambrose: “it is impossible for Canada to reach its Kyoto targets.”

Build on past work.
Most sustainable housing projects are new builds, many of which are costly. That is until Toronto-based Work Worth Doing, a hybrid design studio and think tank sought a different approach. Work Worth Doing created Now House™, a project whose mission is to improve existing houses. Now House will turn a 60-year-old WWII house into a near zero energy home — one that produces as much energy as it uses. The project will begin with retrofitting one house, then move on to a community of wartime houses, then the plan is to improve a million similar homes within Canada.

This Old House. Can it become even better than new?

Work with the community. Now House’s multi-disciplinary team consists of designers, architects, engineers, homeowners, and sustainable building experts — all collaborating to make sustainability financially accessible and scalable. To begin the design process, the team invited 60 experts in the sustainable building business to an integrated design charrette, a brainstorming session to pitch ideas of how to transform the home.

Open the knowledge.
The goal of Now House is simple. It will empower homeowners and contractors with the knowledge to dramatically improve the energy efficiency of existing homes through a few relatively easy modifications. After the completion of the first house, Now House will release the retrofit design instructions to the public through multiple channels, including the Open Architecture Network. By keeping the knowledge accessible, the Now House team hopes to create a foundation for others to modify the designs to fit their homes.

Now House team.

The Now House collaboration and retrofit yields benefits across a number of areas. The cost can be reasonably managed and financed by the owners of these wartime homes. Starting immediately, the near-zero energy cost protects homeowners from increasing energy costs, providing an annual net savings of about $1000. GHG emissions are reduced by 5.4 tonnes per house annually. If the one million wartime houses across Canada were Now Houses, the reduction is even more impressive, accounting for 3% of Canada’s Kyoto Protocol goals. Indoor and outdoor air quality improves, leading to healthier homes and communities.

Will democratizing sustainable housing be enough to change Canada? It’s too early to tell, but it’s a start. Open source makes sustainability designs available. Nobody owns it, everybody can use it, and anybody can improve it. The Now House is one project created by one small team. What would happen if one hundred teams created projects like this? Stay tuned to see how collaboration can turn a country around…

Stay tuned for part II.

This entry was posted by Matt Munóz on Tuesday, July 24th, 2007 at 11:21 am and is filed under culture, education, design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.