Nadine’s not a fan. But I think she may have helped me find a legitimate good use for AI. I asked AI: can you write me a passage of erotic literature in the style of Nadine Dorries that involves a critical depiction of heat pumps? And it came up with this.

Lots of trees were harmed in the making of this movie: it’s mass timber on steroids. For the ceiling Sadie used stripped pale oak wood (1m thick again). We didn’t bother with joists. It was late. We were tired. This sits on a 1m thick timber superstructure. And 1m thick timber cladding. 13)

We might have lost the run of ourselves with the front door. In the absence of a way to convey and insulated door, we added three of them. Overkill? Certainly. But at least there’s little or no chance of any heat loss from opening the door. 12)

Triple glazing is par for the course in passive houses in most climate zones, and again we had to improvise, adding three layers of glazing. And don’t be asking questions about thermal bridging from those mullions and transoms. The windows sit in the insulation layer, of course. 11)

This also meant that finishing materials had to be 1m thick too. So when you add in the timber cladding Sadie chose inside and outside, we ended up with a 3m thick wall. This is only, say, six times or so thicker than you’d normally see in a passive house. 10)

For the walls, Minecraft offered a great material to radically reduce embodied carbon: strawbale. As all blocks in Minecraft = 1m2, our insulation layer is 1m thick everywhere - massively over-specified, even for a passive house. 9) @michaelburchert.bsky.social @jurajmikurcik.bsky.social

Next the concrete slab was installed. Minecraft doesn’t enable concrete pours, so we put in blocks. We chose white concrete, because GGBS - a low carbon cement substitute - makes a lighter colour concrete than Portland cement. 7)

With a level base, the next job was to lay the insulated foundations. This is supposed to be a tub of high density polystyrene — either expanded or extruded — but Minecraft doesn’t have those materials, shockingly, so we made do with something visually similar, thermal conductivity be damned. 6)

There were a few mishaps at this stage. Sadie dug down a little too far and exposed some magma. A timber patch-up combusted, but a gold one worked. And then this guy started robbing spoil. 5)

Sadie leveled the ground out before adding insulation. The patterned section you can see is a seam of coal in the ground. What better metaphor for #KeepitintheGround could you find than building a passive house - which needs next to no heat - on top of a coal seam? @billmckibben.bsky.social

Sadie chose a coastal site, which meant large windows to make the most of the sea views. I stupidly didn’t think there would actually be a sun path in Minecraft, so assumed it was a south facing site. It turns out it’s actually east facing. But let’s pretend it’s south. 2)

This is Sadie, sporting her favourite Christmas present, her dancing wings. Sadie wanted to build a passive house with me in Minecraft, a game that bamboozles me. The only thing I can do in it is push sheep into the water. 2)

My nine year old daughter Sadie built a passive house on Minecraft. A thread 1)

On the walk back from school today I was talking to my 11 year old son, Rex, about a #passivehouse version of the iconic poster for Ridley Scott’s Alien to promote the mag I publish, @phplus.bsky.social. Within an hour he emailed me this. (PS he won’t see the movie till he’s old enough)

The house’s ventilation system has an online dashboard showing monitored indoor environmental quality data. Stephen and Nicola went on holiday, leaving their teenage son to house sit. Stephen logged on to his ventilation system from Spain, and noticed something odd. 8)

The feedback was blunt. They were too boring. In the end, I was allowed to keep one graph, and only because if was funny. The graph related to this lovely passive house in Dublin, the home and office of architects Stephen Tierney and Nicola Haines. 7)

I also tried to include this one, showing the absurdly low space heating use of the first passive house over its first 25 years. Attempts at low energy building have a long history of problems such as overheating and unexpectedly high real energy use, so results like these are extraordinary. 6)

Passive house advocates tend to like a graph. If they could show how you much they love you via a graph, they would. True to form, I tried to smuggle some graphs into my talk, such as this one, showing the indoor temperature of the first passive house in a heat wave. 5)

This all happened in November 2021. It was the Covid restrictions that meant we were only allowed a small crowd, honest. Covid had made me out of practice being out in public, let alone speaking in public. So I learned my whole TED talk verbatim. Which made it a bit stiffer than I’d like. 3)

Are McKinsey & Co talking out of both sides of their mouth on sustainability, given their 💰💰💰work on fossil fuel? I’ve never noticed a sponsored post from McKinsey before today on my LinkedIn feed (click on the image in this post to view it in full). The post is all about sustainability. Short 🧵

If a single project could embody what architecture needs to become in the 21st century, this might be it. Short 🧵