5 [ Net-Zero House ]

Woodland Abode is in the Ivanhoe Northeast neighbourhood of Kansas City, Missouri. Most of the neighbourhood is low-income, single-parent families. Like many urban core neighbourhoods, disinvestment in the area has led to vacancy, crime, and concentrated poverty. The goal of Woodland Abode is to offer an affordable and equitable net-zero residential house to those who are afflicted by the local affordable housing crisis, as well as rising energy-burden in the Kansas City area. Woodland Abode stands as an opportunity to revitalize the neighbourhood’s housing market by uplifting the neighbourhood and empowering the people of the neighbourhood environmentally, financially, and socially.

The slope of the roof gives you the feeling that you are enclosed within the room and also provides enough space for the PV arrays to face south. Building configuration and fenestration design were strategically done to maximize building energy performance and minimize reliance on the grid. Using renewable energy sources reduces the reliance on the grid which will make the occupants resilient in front of changes in grid energy amount or cost. The well-insulated house, with its sealed envelope, will keep occupants comfortable in the freezing winters and hot summers of the Midwest.