Project Designer: Adam Rude

Architect of Record: Mark Sofield, Prospect Land Company

This net-zero energy statement project for a Colorado renewable energy activist integrates photovoltaic performance, shading strategies, and passive heat gain with spatial experience and view axes to derive an optimized building form.

The stacked programmatic volumes are rotationally shifted to acknowledge distant mountain views, align the project to local adjacencies, and integrate a tapering overhang into the envelope.  The geometry takes into account the sun’s hourly azimuth angle, and the overhang gradually enlarges along the project’s south façade to provide a longer overhang when the sun is lower in the sky.  This formal result of this strategy also satisfies the client’s angular formal taste.

Interior spatial definition is achieved through planar and sectional tapers, combining steps in ceiling and floor with horizontal expansion and contraction to create volumetrically differentiated program. An insulated fly-ash concrete wall bisects the house and anchors all roof and floor framing, while a spheroid wood-framed wall expands and dramaticizes the vertical circulation core.

Spray-foam insulation throughout the walls, roof, and under the floor slab minimizes electrical demands, and the remaining electrical load is generated by a photovoltaic canopy which soars over the house and also provides rain protection to the roof deck. The difference in needed photovoltaic area and total roof canopy area is taken up by a random scattering of sky-lights which will allow a planted roof garden.