Passive House Development
The Passive House standard was invented over 20 years ago by Prof. Dr Wolfgang Feist and Prof. Dr Bo Adamson of the University of Innsbruck, Austria.
The development of the Passive House standard was initially conceived of as a comfort standard. The story goes that Dr Feist read an article in a building magazine about a research programme that claimed there was no direct connection between increasing the amount of insulation in a building and improving the buildings performance. Dr Feist was angered by this claim and set about developing a building standard to demonstrate that there are other important factors that need to be included in such a research programme to improve a buildings overall performance, and so the Passive House standard was born.
The first building to be constructed using the Passive House standard was a maisonette style domestic property in Darmstadt Germany. This building included 4 3 storey units, one of which Dr Feist himself moved into and still lives in today. This property has been extensively monitored and helped to develop and improve the Passive House standard as well as the Passive House Planning Package (PHPP).