SGA-Designed Wheaton College Pine Hall Receives PHIUS Passive House Award in the School Category

SGA, a Boston and New York City-based national award-winning architecture, interior design, planning, branded environments and virtual design and construction practice, today announced that Pine Hall at Wheaton College has received the PHIUS Passive House 2020 Award in the School category.

Passive House Institute US, or PHIUS-certified buildings implement a set of design principles to attain a quantifiable and rigorous level of energy efficiency. To achieve this level of performance and PHIUS Certification, Pine Hall utilized energy conservation measures such as airtight construction, high performance windows and curtainwall, optimized exterior shading, and high efficiency heating and cooling.

Pine Hall at Wheaton College in Norton was designed by SGA and is the first student residence hall to achieve passive house certification in Massachusetts, as well as the largest passive house certified building in New England. The 45,000-square-foot, L-shaped building was a collaboration between SGA, Thornton Tomasetti, AHA Engineers and Commodore Builders. The residence hall features 178 beds for students and a 2,000-square-foot common space for programs and events, such as gaming competitions, meetings, yoga classes and mini conferences.

“We’re excited to win this prestigious award by the Passive House Institute,” said Andrew Steingiser, Architect and Certified Passive House Consultant at SGA. “Pine Hall is an exemplary building that shows how we can achieve Passive House performance in other large commercial project types as well.”

PHIUS awarded the finalists of the 2020 Passive Projects Design Competition at the annual Design Awards ceremony on Friday, October 30, 2020, capping off a week of the PHIUS 2020 Passive House Hootenannies. Now in its sixth year, this juried competition recognizes exemplary passive building projects of all types and climate zones.

This year’s panel of volunteer judges included Tessa Bradford (Smith), Arathi Gowda, Shannen Martin, Graham Irwin, and Katrin Klingenberg. Competition entries were judged on their strengths in the following categories: energy performance, design, craftsmanship, use of healthy materials, level of difficulty for the given climate and site, and cost-effectiveness of the affordable projects.