How do you serve the needs of senior citizens who have fallen on hard times in the Big Apple? In Betances Residence, CookFox Architects have cooked up an extraordinary response, integrating the protective benefits of passive house with beautifully considered, user-tailored design.

Sometimes reality is stranger than fiction. And sometimes strange but breathtaking fiction subverts reality.

In issue 47 we took a break from our normal approach to Big Picture, with good reason: passive house playing a starring role in an extraordinary US TV show.

If you were choosing how to build in a bushfire-prone region of Australia, you could be forgiven for skirting over the possibility of packing your walls with straw. Talina Edwards of Envirotecture describes an extraordinary off-grid passive house which uses straw and a range of low embodied carbon building materials to blitz regulatory requirements on fire, while delivering year-round comfort levels that the neighbours can scarcely believe.

We take a look at Pepper Tree Passive House, a small secondary dwelling attached to a young family’s home in the Australian Illawarra region.

Issue 43 featured an off-grid prototype house in British Columbia, designed and constructed to demonstrate an innovative approach to future building.

In the first installment of a brand new photo essay feature, in which we profile passive houses and other eco-buildings from around the world, architect Joe Lyth writes about how the aesthetic of simple backcountry cabins inspired the design of his rural home on New Zealand’s North Island.