Evanston, Illinois, USA
This project is a certified Passive House + PHIUS Zero home that seamlessly integrates sustainability with a modern design aesthetic within the context of a listed historic district. This right-sized home integrates a suite of resilient strategies and several measures to reduce its operational and embodied carbon.
Evanston’s First Passive House by Nathan Kipnis won a Future House Award 2025 from The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and Global Design News.
While the front facade of the home is in scale with the neighborhood’s larger, vintage homes, the massing of the house is much thinner front to back, and has a one story ‘L’ shaped family room, thereby reducing the amount of required construction material.
Due to the strict Passive House requirements, the number and size of the windows had to be carefully taken into account to maximize their impact. Windows were located close to perpendicular walls reflect daylight deep into the interior, which can be seen in the staircase image.
There is a ‘light shelf’ at the rear of the house. This shades the interior from the high summer sun while admitting the low winter sun. The top of the light shelf redirects daylight onto the the family room ceiling, providing daylighting deep into the space. The family room ceiling is asymmetrical, providing more area for both additional roof mounted PV panels as well as more ceiling area for the redirected daylight to illuminate.
Combined with an EUI of 13.78, the 12.6 kW solar panels makes the home ‘Net Positive’ on an annual basis (-4.81 EUI).
The home is designed to be fully accessible on the first floor. There are three steps up to the front door, which is significantly less than elsewhere in the neighborhood. A future accessible ramp can be concealed into a landscape feature. The home’s first floor is all one level, with a wider hallway that leads to an office/bedroom, and an adjacent full bath with a zero threshold shower.
Because the house is all-electric, there are no onsite CO2 emissions. The ‘fireplace’ is actually a zero carbon vapor unit that gives the look of real fire.
To address local climate related resilient design issues such as high winds, heavy rains and potential flooding, the house has oversized gutters and downspouts, hurricane straps at key structural points, a top of foundation that is 12″ higher than code, and equipment in the sacrificial crawl space that is set well above the floor level.
This project serves as an exemplary model for successfully combining sustainable and resilient design strategies with its modern design, while fitting into a challenging historical context.
Architects: Kipnis Architecture + Planning
Lead Architect; Nathan Kipnis
Design Team: Daniel Contreras and Lauren Coburn
General Contractor: Berliant Builders, Inc.
Client: Private
Photographers: Norman Sizemore
