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Passive House Design by Certified Passivhaus Architects

As Certified Passive House designers, rjha create comfortable, ultra energy-efficient buildings for environmentally conscious clients and commercial developers. Passive House represents a standard for today—delivering long-term energy and financial resilience for the future. And importantly, it doesn’t need to cost the Earth—either environmentally or financially.

What is Passive House Design?

Passive House (or Passivhaus) is the leading international standard for low-energy building design. Developed in Germany, it is now adopted worldwide. It takes a fabric-first approach, using climate data, intelligent design, and high-performance construction to reduce energy demand at source, rather than relying on complex or energy-intensive systems. The result is simple: buildings that maintain comfort largely through passive means. They require very little energy to heat in winter and are carefully designed to prevent overheating in summer. This is front and centre, with the global concerns of fuel security and rising energy costs.

What makes a building ‘Passive’?

A Passive House is designed to maintain a stable, comfortable internal environment with minimal reliance on heating or cooling. By carefully controlling heat loss and optimising natural heat gains, energy demand can be reduced by up to 90% compared to a typical building. In practice, this means:

  • Consistent indoor temperatures throughout the year
  • A continuous supply of fresh, filtered air
  • Quiet, calm internal environments
  • Very low energy consumption/bills

Every Passive House is shaped by five core principles:

1. Energy Efficient Fabric

A fabric-first approach with high levels of continuous insulation to minimise heat loss throughout.

2. Air Tightness

Airtight construction across all junctions, to eliminate uncontrolled heat loss through leaky fabric elements.

3. Low Energy Windows and Doors

High-performance triple-glazed windows and doors, oriientated to maximise useful solar gains, whilst limiting unwanted solar energy through appropriate shading.

4. Thermal Bridge Free

Thermal bridge-free detailing at all junctions, ensuring heatloss is minimised and condensation driven mould is eliminated.

5. MVHR

Mechanical ventilation with heat recovery (MVHR) for efficient, balanced airflow, creating a healthy, filtered internal environment.

6. Financial (rjha Core Principle)

Optimised building design to lower service and fabric costs to balance the Passive House 'premium'.

How We Design

As Bershire and RBWMs only Passive House certified Architects, rjha ensures Passive House principles are embedded from the outset.
We consider orientation, form, materials, and detailing as part of a holistic strategy—supported by detailed modelling to ensure performance targets are met. This integrated approach allows us to design buildings that are elegant, well-proportioned, and technically robust—maximising solar gain while carefully controlling the risk of overheating.
Passive House projects require us to work collaboratively with the entire design and procurement team. This includes clients, consultants, and contractors. As a team we deliver buildings that are not only well designed, but perform exactly as intended.

'Bang For Your Buck'

Passive House is often perceived as expensive. In reality, it is considered a long-term investment. While there may be a modest increase in upfront construction cost, this is offset by:

  • Ongoing savings over the building’s lifetime.
  • Significantly reduced heating and cooling costs from day one.
  • Simpler, smaller mechanical systems with lower installation and maintenance costs.
  • Protection against future energy price increases.
As energy costs continue to inflate, low-energy buildings offer long-term financial certainty. They also support stronger asset value, with high-performance, sustainable buildings becoming increasingly desirable in the market.

Refurbishment and Retrofit - EnerPHit

While Passive House is primarily a new-build standard, its sister standard—EnerPHit—applies the same principles to refurbishment projects. EnerPHit maintains a rigorous approach while recognising the practical constraints of working with existing buildings. For example, airtightness requirements are adjusted from 0.6 air changes per hour (Passive House) to 1.0 air changes per hour under EnerPHit—still significantly more demanding than typical UK standards. This makes EnerPHit a robust and realistic pathway to dramatically improving the performance of existing buildings.

Let’s Talk

Whether you are planning a new home, retrofit, or larger development, we can help you realise the benefits of Passive House design. Get in touch to start the conversation.