It is a fact that carbon and greenhouse gas emission levels have skyrocketed way past a point seen in the last four hundred thousand years, and it is causing global warming and climate change. It is a fact that peer-reviewed studies demonstrate that over 97% of climate scientists, and nearly 200 organizations worldwide, find human activity to cause global warming and climate change (American Association for the Advancement of Science 2009; Cook, Nuccitelli, Green, Richardson, Winkler, Painting, Way, Jacobs, and Skuce 2013; Governor’s Office for Planning and Research 2018). It is a fact that we are depleting the planet’s resources as population and consumption explode. It is a fact that we can link emerging societal problems to climate change. The ecological and environmental outcomes from human behavior could be terrifying; In the United States, the cost of weather related disasters cost $306 billion just in 2017.
Starting in 2008, we took the socio-ecological effects of human behavior as a sobering, intransigent mandate to learn all we could on how to heal this planet. For all our work with the built environment and regional planning, we push as hard as we can – sometimes to the point of confronting law – to create the healthiest, lowest energy habits and communities possible. In general, our aim is to have human existence on this planet be energy giving, not energy taking, so that we live on this precious earth as lightly as possible.
79 Simpaug is our place to learn, where we try to bring all the disciplines of “sustainable development” together. It is a place where we have the luxury of creating from the ideal, introducing innovative technologies, new ways of thinking and approaching problems, experimenting and creating. We try to take academic research and turn it into a physical product.
While the main house was a 1980’s attempt as passive solar, the infrastructure is being completely renovated according to the latest Passive House Alliance United States research. Future solar installations would at a minimum make the property net-zero energy, as advocated by the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association. We design with attention to the public health research on environmental toxins, issues of indoor air quality, and problems of human development surfacing from public health problems from our built environment. The property is designed through advanced permaculture practices, and follows the initiative of the Living Building Challenge. We push for zero waste and zero net-carbon solutions. We deeply respect the need for healthy interconnection as advocated by Regional Plan Association. But, most importantly, we push for our environments to produce socio-ecological wellbeing, such that our place generates the sociological happiness and potential we all deserve. With great humility, we always want our clients to know we always are learning and living from a place of love.