This autumn, the 120-year-old design school will be adding a comprehensive, highly interactive course to its already robust Sustainable Design Institute online offerings, focusing in on the core ...

Even diehard Instagrammers admit it: Sometimes the best design is in what you don’t see. Such is the case with passive solar design, an approach to building that—in a nutshell—uses a house’s site, ...

Switch to solar with a system built for you. There isn’t a strict definition for what makes a home "solar" — it just has to use energy from the sun in some capacity. If you’re building a new home, it ...

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... The house is cool, but most homes are these days, in the sweltering summer heat. Here, though, it should be hot. Or at least, the air-conditioning should be ...

A new study demonstrates a way to adapt the so-called Trombe wall -- a passive solar building design from the 19th century -- to not only heat but also cool buildings, while drastically reduce ...

Orient the long axis of the house in an east-west direction. Locate habitable rooms on the south side of the house for greater comfort while putting utility rooms, bathrooms, closets, and hallways on ...

Passive solar heating and cooling was omitted from the interesting article on "Building Green" (C&EN, July 16, page 11). This technique can save 50% of the heating and cooling costs of a home in the ...

The Passive House is the future of homebuilding. It’s not the same as the passive solar concept from the seventies, but it’s not new. It’s a design system that is just starting to come into its own.

Dear Jim: We have a large family and use much hot water. I cannot afford to have a solar water heating system installed, but I would like to make some type of solar water heater myself. What do you ...

Passive design is architectural design that eliminates the need for mechanical heating and cooling of a building through the use of smart, time-tested heating and cooling strategies such as natural ...

Sonya Newenhouse’s Wisconsin-based, 968-square-foot passive solar home is 80 percent more energy-efficient than the average U.S. home. Building a home with near-zero winter heating costs may sound ...