Graham Whiting of Whiting Design has been working on a Passive House design for a family of permaculture farmers south of Guelph, Ontario. TreeHugger Sami has written a lot about Permaculture, and says "the idea behind permaculture gardening is to use nature's own design tricks to create productive landscapes that do much of the work for you." That is pretty much what Passive House designers try to do- let the fabric of the building do the work of keeping you warm or cool instead of a lot of mechanical equipment and fossil fuels.
© Whiting Design
