Design Excellence Feature - Cycle Architecture + Planning St. Marks Passive House

This Design Excellence Feature highlights Cycle Architecture + Planning, whose St. Marks project has recently been recognized by NYSERDA as a Building of Excellence. Cycle Architecture + Planning, led by Tony Daniels and Caitlin Martusewicz, works with its clients and collaborating partners to create urban design and architecture for living cities and buildings. CA+P is a collaborating studio that brings people of diverse backgrounds and aspirations together. An analytically focused practice with deep roots in the expanding issue of sustainability, CA+P designs, plans, manages, and executes projects for clients large, small, and in-between with a calibrated understanding of the competing interests that characterize work in the public arena.

The St. Marks Passive House project is a proposed new 10-unit apartment building in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. It was awarded for energy efficient, low–to–zero carbon design under the Buildings of Excellence competition, administered by The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA). Buildings of Excellence is the only competition of its kind in the nation and is leading the way to achieve carbon neutral building performance in New York State. The award winners represent significant advancement in construction practices and point the way towards a zero-carbon future for buildings that can be replicated at scale. The project is being developed by Masmark LLC, a real estate developer with a record of completing award-winning energy-efficient buildings in Italy. The project is Masmark’s first development venture in the U.S. and has been pre-certified as a Passive House by the Passive House Institute. Passive House is a building standard for energy use, demand and construction detailing that is substantially more stringent than building codes. Buildings constructed to the Passive House standard are known to improve the interior comfort of buildings while significantly reducing a building’s energy demand.

Caitlin of CA+P says of the St. Marks Passive House, “It has been a really great learning experience working with a team of committed individuals who believe in, and practice quality energy efficient design as ‘business as usual.’ It’s a great honor to be recognized as such, and I am looking forward to further developments in innovation and knowledge-sharing that the Buildings of Excellence Award will make possible.”

To learn more about the St. Marks Passive House watch this incredible video of Caitlin and Tony sharing thoughtful details of the process of designing and building it. Also, check out this detailed press release!