Minnesota is hitting new heights when it comes to green energy standards. The state’s first-ever Passive House multifamily development, Hook & Ladder Apartments, opened October 2019 in northeast Minneapolis. It is set to prove just how much of a difference Passive House construction can make in operations cost and occupant comfort compared to buildings designed to conventional energy codes.To create a real-time project demo, lhb Architects designed the complex as a side-by-side experiment with two adjacent, nearly identical apartment buildings. One set of the look alike apartment buildings is built to state energy code specifications, the other to the Passive House Institute U.S. (

Winters in Traverse City can be brutal, so when planning its proposed four-story, 47,000-sq.-ft. Trailside45 apartment building in the northern Michigan town, owner, developer, contractor and operator, Westwind Construction, knew it needed a durable, energy-efficient exterior wall system that would also be attractive and easy to maintain. At first, the company tried life-sized samples of a stenciled brick design for the exterior wall. That didn’t achieve the look the design team wanted, so it explored other options.“We envisioned a modern, contemporary design and wanted a versatile exterior appearance, using as many textures as possible to provide exterior character,” said

The Mooring on Foreside trades the bland, institutional décor of traditional senior living facilities for a calming New England cape aesthetic. The Mooring on Foreside prides itself in providing responsive, specialized care for individuals living with progressive memory loss. In order to offer residents suffering from these conditions effective care in a familiar environment, The Mooring’s owner enlisted Gawron Turgeon Architects of Scarborough, Maine to design the ideal facility.“The overall challenge for The Mooring project was to create a functional, residential scale, small house community with a New England cottage style aesthetic. We also had to offer the safety and durabil

UC Davis West Village, the nation’s largest planned zero net energy community, continues to work toward its goal of producing 100 percent of the energy it uses.A 2015 report released by UC Davis and the West Village Community Partnership LLC said the community is 82 percent of its way toward reaching zero net energy, or ZNE. The analysis covers the time period between September 2013 and August 2014. “The neighborhood is close to where we want it to be, but we still are not at the finish line,” said Sid England, assistant vice chancellor of the UC Davis Office of Environmental Stewardship and Sustainability. “I think we’re on track to get to 100 percent in t