This is the Sustainability 101 educational blog series! Our blog today will focus on Passive Solar Design.

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Shou-Sugi Ban is a Japanese cladding technique that preserves wood (making it resistant to fire, vermin, and decay) by first charring it, then cooling it, cleaning it, and finishing it with natural oil. We have used this technique on our very own METHOD.TO test shed, charring the wood ourselves; but for other projects in Toronto we have left the fun to the professionals.

Everyone knows that law students write the bar exam to becomes lawyers. Medical students take on months of residency to become doctors. But how does an architect become licensed? Few people are familiar with the ExAC (Examination for Architects in Canada), which is a grueling, 2-day, 4-part exam held once a year in November.

An ERV is an Energy Recovery Ventilator. Its little brother is an HRV, or Heat Recovery Ventilator. Either is needed when building a new, energy-efficient, airtight home (or renovating your current home) to ensure that you have fresh indoor air without unnecessarily losing heat through your building envelope (your walls, roofs, floors; and around windows and doors).

The owners of what would become Willowdale Passive Solar House had a poorly built, leaky, drippy, mouldy home that needed to be torn down. We normally try to salvage stuff and avoid landfill, but there was truly nothing of value here.

Have you ever walked into a room or walked past a building and just something about it felt right or looked right? That’s probably because it is proportioned well; following rules set out by ancient Greek and Roman architects and based on the human body.

Back in November 2009, we were nothing more than a few people around a table in Paul Dowsett’s dining room. We had no formal office space, but we did have a dream. A dream of making sustainability mainstream. 7 years later, as the NOW Magazine People’s Choice winner for Best Design Firm, we have achieved that goal, and validated our efforts as leaders of sustainability.

Be it hurricane, ice storm, flood, or wildfire, there are few greater threats to a community than natural disaster. The design and planning of our cities and economies must be able to respond to disaster, bounce back, resume operation, and be a catalyst for redevelopment — all in addition to being safe havens for their residents.

Sustainable is literally pushing the building envelope. Proposing a forward-thinking, environmentally responsible, and energy-efficient wall assembly that improves the durability of your home to ensure improved occupant health and comfort.

Sustainable is proud to be leading the design for this game-changing facility — the 1st in Canada, and only the 9th in the world!

Smart thermostats do not change the amount of energy your home needs to stay warm/cool. They restrict the amount of time your furnace is on. This conserves energy, but usually results in user discomfort – like if your thermostat thinks you are at work, but you stay home sick, or it’s a holiday Monday.

Since opening up shop in Toronto’s east end in 2009, Sustainable has jumped leaps and bounds towards establishing the new normal for how we think about building in a post-carbon world. In 2002, leading American architect Ed Mazria founded Architecture 2030, an organization committed to protecting our global environment by using innovation and common sense to develop and implement bold solutions to global warming. Mazria developed energy-reduction targets for buildings leading up to 2030 as a Challenge.