“While the process isn’t easy,” says Byrne, “it just requires patience and pride to meet the exacting standards and if anyone wants it, anyone can have it. We do want to inspire people to reach these targets. They just make sense for people, buildings, and the planet. By opening up about our path to achieve these highperformance targets, we hope that others will try it too.” To meet the International Passive House Standard, the walls, and roofs of the Putman Family YWCA were R37.5 effective and R49 effective respectively and are thermal bridge free. By comparison, code buildings have significantly lower R values and permit some thermal bridging. Thermal bridging is the reason we have cold spots, condensation, and mould in buildings. Passive House insulations are approximately 50 per cent better than conventional. To achieve design innovation, Kearns Mancini has had to achieve materials innovation. The YWCA Hamilton wanted the Putman Family YWCA to be a concrete building and asked Kearns Mancini to work with a local precast manufacturer, Coreslab Structures. KMAI was up to the challenge; a precast Passive House had never been built before. Coreslab Structures provided a Total Precast solution that incorporated a load bearing wall, continuous insulation, airtightness, and an exterior finish all in one component. The building consisted of over 330 precast components, including wall panels, beams, and columns and over 43,400 square feet of precast hollow core slabs. KEARNS MANCINI ARCHITECTS
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