Active House: The Most Passive-Aggressive Name in Homebuilding?

A building standard emphasizing daylighting and natural ventilation promotes net-zero-energy homes peppered with lots of operable windows and skylights—but is it more than a publicity stunt by skylight manufacturers?

The Active House standard was developed by an alliance of mostly European manufacturers, designers, and nonprofits led by Danish skylight manufacturer Velux. It has been used in a number of European projects since 2007, most of them in Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, and the U.K., and has just been introduced in the U.S. with a prototype home completed for a family in St. Louis.