Daniel Colombini, a principal at Goldman Copeland, the New York City-based consulting engineering firm, has won the US Department of Energy’s Blazing the Trail Grand Award for his LEED Platinum “Passive House” in Westchester County, New York. The national award recognizes “the builder with the most innovative use of technologies, materials, sensors, automation and advanced controls to optimize the performance of the home.”
The award was presented to Colombini at the US DOE’s Housing Innovation Awards Ceremony in Salt Lake City on Oct. 2. He also received a 2024 Housing Innovation Award, recognizing the most impressive and advanced homes among leading DOE Zero Energy Ready Home builders.
The award-winning single-family three-bedroom house with an attached garage and about 3,500 square feet of living space is located in Ossining, New York. It offers a new model for sustainable, energy-efficient and cost-effective residences.
A Passive House is a high-performance building standard developed by the Passive House Institute and is the only internationally recognized, performance-based energy standard in construction. LEED is the world’s most widely used green building rating system, and LEED Platinum is its highest certification. The combination of LEED Platinum and Passive House certifications shows that the house meets the highest levels of energy-efficient and green design. The house is also Zero Energy – as certified by the US Department of Energy – and is both net zero and carbon neutral, including the home’s energy consumption and electric vehicle charging.
Colombini, the engineer-homeowner, set out to create a new standard of suburban housing. The home is a partial tear-down and retrofit, meaning that the house that he originally purchased was torn down except for the foundation, which was retained, and 75% of the materials in the old house were reused and thereby diverted from landfill.
The new house incorporates passive house principles, including a high-performance thermal enclosure, airtightness and heat recovery, continuous balanced ventilation, high-performance glazing of windows and doors, shading and daylighting and moisture control. The overall design provides an air quality that it is so high that Colombini’s allergy-induced asthma disappeared.
The architect for the project is Christina Griffin of CGA Studio in Hastings-on-Hudson, NY. The contractor is Ed Nugent of Fort Montgomery, NY. The certification consultant is Integral Building + Design in New Paltz, NY. The landscape architect is Barbara Restaino of Restaino Design in Grahamsville, NY.
Goldman Copeland consulting engineering firm is active within the broader tri-state real estate community addressing the engineering needs of commercial office buildings, health-care facilities, universities, cultural institutions, religious and civic institutions, and government facilities. The firm has completed energy audits and retro-commissioning projects for more than 70 million square feet of commercial and institutional properties. Among the world-renowned properties for which it has provided engineering services are Grand Central Terminal, the Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center, Carnegie Hall, and Broadway and Off-Broadway theaters.
