Jenny Peysin of Jenny Peysin Architecture | Wilderness Drive in East Jewett | Passive House Design
Courtesy of Jenny Peysin Architecture
Passive House Design
This week we will be speaking with Jenny Peysin, a licensed architect based in Brooklyn, NYC, about her current passive house project, Wilderness Drive in the Catskills region of upstate New York. As the founder of Jenny Peysin Architecture, her approach to design is rooted in a modernist philosophy, one that incorporates people with the spaces in which they live and work. She has also become a certified passive house designer and has since shifted her focus towards this way of designing and building. In today’s episode, we will be speaking to her about this topic of passive housing, along with how this is changing the current urban landscape in order to reduce our current ecological footprint. Moreover, this conversation will explore the changing policy and shifting structure of our urban landscape that is now enabling more transformation to occur than ever before.
Passive houses, which are ultra-efficient dwellings that use a fraction of the energy to heat regular homes, are increasingly seen as a solution to rising greenhouse gas emissions. Today we will speak to Jenny about how her work, including her Wilderness Drive project in Green County, in the Catskills Region of New York, has provided energy-efficient infrastructure and utilities. Join us as we explore this topic and much more, including how Jenny is currently re-shaping the current urban landscape to incorporate more sustainable designs.
“So I think it’s about time that we talk about passive house. It’s actually a pretty popular design strategy that I’ve heard other architects talk about. Basically what you’re doing is you’re building a thermos and not a coffee cup. So you’re super insulating the building so the walls have a lot more installation. The windows have three panes of glass instead of two. And the exterior frame of the windows, it is really specifically detailed to minimize thermal bridging. So that word thermal bridging is another thing that comes up as an overall concept of passive house. So basically where you have insulation gaps, such as where the structure of a floor meets the structure of a wall, we want to eliminate that thermal bridge. So you want to make sure that the installation is continuous across that barrier. So you are creating an airtight envelope.”
Courtesy of Jenny Peysin Architecture
About Jenny Peysin
Jenny Peysin is a licensed architect based in Brooklyn, NYC, who has previously worked with Blaze Makoid Architecture and Iu + Bibliowicz Architects. She is a registered architect in the states of New York and Connecticut and holds a Bachelor of Architecture from Cornell University. Jenny also interweaves her love of New York City and its rich history with her work as the founder of Jenny Peysin Architecture. Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, she also received her certificate of passive house design and has since been passionate about incorporating sustainability into every level of her projects. Her current focus is on incorporating residential projects and providing client-oriented design solutions that reduce carbon emissions and meet international climate targets.
Episode Timestamps
2:07 – Your path as an architect started at Carnegie Hall. Tell us about that.
6:20 – When did you know that you were ready to start your own business? And how did you go about doing that?
8:09 – One that we will be focusing on today is the Wilderness Drive project in Green county in the Catskills. Could you tell us the particulars about the area and the project site itself?
10:17 – The site itself is five acres. And is it flat or sloped? Is it forested? Is there a lot of sun? What did it feel like when you were there?
14:21 – Let’s talk more about the passive house design strategy.
18:44 – Since passive house is a relatively new concept in this kind of modern iteration of it, what are some of the ways that you have developed to communicate the ideas of passive house to your clients?
25:00 – What are the origins of the modern passive house movement?
28:54 – How do you compare LEED to passive house and what are the ways that someone can understand the two in context?
Connect with Jenny Peysin:
Courtesy of Jenny Peysin Architecture
About your host:
Atif Qadir is the Founder & CEO of Commonplace, a technology company making it easy for commercial real estate professionals to find and use the $100B of real estate incentives given out every year in the US.
His work has been covered by Technology Review, The Real Deal, Commercial Observer, and Propmodo. He’s also a frequent speaker on the future of buildings and cities on popular industry podcasts and at conferences, including this past year at the Commercial Observer National DEI Conference, Yale AREA Conference, Columbia Real Estate Symposium, Open Data Week NYC and Austin Design Week.
About Commonplace
Commonplace is a founding sponsor of American Building. It is a 100% minority-owned, real estate technology company founded in 2020 to make financing social impact development projects across the US easier. It is funded by venture capital investors Hometeam Ventures, Park West Asset Management, New York Ventures and Shadow Ventures.
About Michael Graves
The world-famous design firm Michael Graves is also a founding sponsor of American Building. Its namesake, the iconoclastic designer Michael Graves, FAIA was a fierce advocate for people-centric design. His work defines a generation of American architecture and includes the Portland Building, the Humana Building and the Denver Public Library. The 1st season of American Building was filmed live at The Warehouse, his historic home in Princeton, New Jersey:
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