Certified Case Studies

2938 Madrona Street in Bellingham, WA, was the 100th home to enter into the Kulshan Community Land Trust, an organization that promotes beautifully-designed, energy-efficient homes. The home was developed in partnership with The Cascade Joinery, a design-build firm that specializes in green building and custom timber work. Located in Bellingham’s Birchwood neighborhood, this affordable, low…

Conceived as a high school science building dedicated to the study of alternative energy, the new Energy Lab at Hawaii Preparatory Academy functions as a zero-net-energy, fully sustainable building. The project’s fundamental goal is that of educating the next generation of students in the understanding of environmentally conscious, sustainable living systems. The building’s donor, the…

The United States Territory of American Samoa, located just 14 degrees south the equator and just west of the international dateline, has a unique set of climate, cultural and environmental challenges. The local agency tasked with navigating these challenges is the American Samoa Environmental Protection Agency (AS-EPA).

Owner David Kendall spent his career as a marine biologist, acutely aware of the impacts of climate change upon ecosystems and human life. Upon retirement, he and his wife decided to take environmental responsibility into their own hands and lower their carbon footprint as much as possible. In 2012, they downsized to a house in…

Sunshine Mathon designed and remodeled the Willowbrook house with the primary goal of providing his family with an inspiring and comfortable place to live. A critical aspect of the inspiration was to reduce the impact of his family’s lifestyle on the land, and the community in which they live. Though Mathon had a tacit goal…

Zero Cottage is an investigation of compact, sustainable urban development. Composed of a 66-square-meter loft townhouse set over a 40-square-meter workshop, Zero Cottage pairs with an existing renovated Edwardian to complete an active mixed-use complex combining cultural, commercial and residential uses on a typical neighborhood lot. The project continues the evolution of an urban site…

The Zero Energy House (ZEH) is a home designed to achieve net zero energy over the course of the year through energy efficient features and solar energy systems. Innovative C21 PV roof slates, the first integrated PV system of its type in New Zealand, produce more energy than required to run the house. The home…

zHome was launched in 2006 as a market catalyst for deeply sustainable, climate neutral homes for the everyday person. Borne out of the context of years of small increments of improvement in environmental performance in green building, the creators sought to revolutionize the paradigm for what was possible, creating hope and action within the context…

DPR Construction set out to demonstrate that Net Zero Energy Certified buildings are accessible to a wide range of companies, not just those that are sustainability experts or that have large construction budgets. DPR’s San Francisco office was designed with aggressive energy efficiency goals—a target of net positive energy production achieved through reduction of energy…