The Combined Effectiveness of Prefab, Wood, and Passive House

The goals of sustainable design and construction have evolved to include an increasing focus on the embodied impacts of buildings in addition to the operational impacts. And although strategies that can achieve these goals have emerged—like net-zero design, onsite renewables, material reuse, and whole-building life-cycle analysis—many can increase initial costs.

Over the past several years, however, a growing number of mid- to high-rise projects have demonstrated how synergies that exist between wood construction, Passive House design, and modular prefabrication can be exploited to reduce both operational and embodied impacts in a cost-effective way.