By its very nature, climate-responsive design is not a set of universal solutions. As climates across the United States vary, so too must building solutions. One of few sustainable principles that spans every location is that it’s better to reuse a structure than to start over. This is where the architect’s task becomes tricky. Unfortunately, many existing houses have seemingly been built without a thought for their locations. And formerly mild threats of natural disasters have often become more acute since construction.
Innovative architects and builders are embracing these multipronged challenges across the country, tackling renovations that thrive in the face of climate change. Below are a few to learn from.
Earthquakes in the West
In some ways, San Francisco’s Jackson House, originally designed by Taliesin apprentice Hank Schubart in 1963, was perfectly adapted to its location. “There was no forced air in the house,” reveals Lawren Patterson, studio director of AD PRO Directory architecture and design firm Marmol Radziner. “It was designed to suit the local climate quite well.” The problem was preparedness for a threat regional homeowners confront: earthquakes.
Older structures in the Bay Area often weren’t effectively attached to their foundations when built. Though this house was in somewhat better shape, Patterson says its concrete foundation exceeded “current building codes for movement,” which have changed considerably in the aftermath of the 1994 Northridge Earthquake. Getting it up to snuff required shoring up the entire house and installing a foundation grounded in larger footings and braced in more rebar, essential for any seismic refitting to “keep concrete somewhat more elastic so it doesn’t crumble when it’s shaking,” explains Patterson, whose team worked with local general contractor Ryan Associates on this climate-responsive renovation.
The challenge in midcentury renovations is finding the space to insert durable support without disfiguring the original design’s sleek lines. Marmol Radziner used moment frames (rigid beam-to-column connections well-suited to resisting lateral forces in glazing-heavy envelopes), whose supplementary support can be secreted in the foundation below. Other elements proved a little more difficult: The historic windows and doors, which were not earthquake code-compliant, required replacement.
Envelope adjustments were sustainable, using locally sourced and milled redwood left unfinished to age naturally. “It requires a lot less maintenance and a lot fewer chemicals,” Patterson explains. The clients emerged with a house that retains its modernist look along with much greater protection against California’s worst decorator: seismic events.
Heat and humidity in the South
Natural disasters might affect a structure intermittently in some locations; in others, nature’s conditions are a force to be reckoned with daily. A sustainability-minded client asked AD PRO Directory architect Scott Parks to reuse as many materials as possible while remodeling a 1960s house in Dallas, keeping in mind the state’s extreme weather. “In Texas, we contend with heat and humidity, but also fairly dramatic temperature swings,” says the founder of Dallas-based Scott Parks Studio, “so it’s important to select materials that can move together over time.”
He started with the façade. As wood siding made the most sense for this wood-framed house, Parks chose cedar, “which is naturally resistant to rot and insects,” he explains, and only replaced the boards that needed replacement. He swapped the traditional carbon-intensive drywall system with healthier and more effective walls: magnesium-oxide board, moisture- and pest-resistant sheep’s-wool insulation, and mineral-based BioLime plaster. “While these materials were more expensive upfront, the investment can pay off through greater durability and fewer issues related to moisture, pests, and deterioration over time,” explains Parks, who worked in collaboration with Seattle-based sustainable consulting firm, Eco Build Lab.
Although Parks retained as many features as possible, keeping existing millwork and exterior doors, he stresses the specificity of these solutions. “The project was less about applying a sustainability checklist and more about reconsidering nearly every part,” he says of the climate-responsive renovation. “We made one decision at a time and asked whether it aligned with the larger goal. The aesthetic really came out of that value system rather than the other way around.”
Temperature extremes in the Midwest
For a Midwestern home to survive both the region’s intensely humid summers and extremely snowy winters, insulation is key. A 1956 home in Bloomfield, Illinois, lacked an appropriate envelope, so by the time architect David Iannuzzi’s clients purchased it in 2020, “it had suffered years of neglect,” laments the founding partner of Detroit architecture firm Disbrow Iannuzzi. Much of the house’s original board-and-batten wood siding had been “fastened directly to the sheathing, which inhibited air flow and promoted rot and mold,” explains Iannuzzi. It required a near-total exterior refashioning.
The team preserved any healthy portions of the siding and replaced the decayed remainder with “vertical-grain cedar planks with an open joint gap onto spacers to create a ventilated rain screen” for easy evaporation and passive cooling. They faced brick portions of the house with “several inches of exterior insulation, which significantly bolsters the home’s thermal performance and helps move the dew point of the wall assembly to the outside of the weather barrier.” Significant in colder climates, the construction method also absorbs intense summer heat.
The renovation didn’t require specialty building products but rather the sensible arrangement of common materials by builder, Masters LLC, and “a knowledge of both building science and construction methods,” Iannuzzi emphasizes. “Our aim is for clear design strategies that solve both visible and invisible issues holistically.”
Seasonal system fluctuations in New York
Few homes are more environmentally sensitive than one using zero energy, but Yun Architecture faced an unusual challenge when hired to execute a passive house renovation of a Brooklyn town house within the Clinton Hill Historic District. “The Passive House approach does obviously require us to do a lot of work on the envelope,” says Felix Ade, a principal at the New York-based studio. “Typically, we do that on the exterior of the façade structure, but with a landmark building, we couldn’t.”
The team accordingly approached the design from the inside. Retaining the historic brownstone and brick façade, they first added a mortar patch coat, then an air barrier, then insulation—“cellulose blown in to fill every nook and cranny to a thickness of five inches,” describes Ade. Next came a vapor barrier, a service cavity, and drywall.
Assuring each layer is tightly sealed is crucial because any façade break is a potential performance loss. Windows were therefore a sourcing challenge, says firm principal Susan Yun. “There aren’t that many US products on the market that have the low U-values and high air tightness needed for a passive house envelope, let alone satisfying the details for a house in a landmark district,” she explains. The town house’s new triple-glazed windows and doors are from Austrian custom supplier Bewiso, who even built a simulated wood muntin to meet Landmarks Preservation Commission requirements. The new roof provided entry for Zehnder fresh air and exhaust systems, relatively simple to introduce within the frame of a house because the ducts are just three inches in diameter. Passive house consultant Ed May and passive-house-experienced contractor R. Sutton & Co. helped guide the architecture team.
“Passive house standards aren’t just saying that a house needs to be highly insulated; they’re saying that a house needs to be built very well,” explains Ade. “It’s essentially insurance against sloppy construction. Now we’re trying to apply that principle on other projects.” In a northeast climate, where annual weather greatly ranges, it creates a comfortable interior year-round.
Tides and hurricanes in the Southeast
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Houses move for a variety of reasons. Nature prompted Beaufort, South Carolina–based AD PRO Directory studio Frederick and Frederick Architects when renovating a 1977 beach house on their home state’s Fripp Island, a barrier landmass like many up and down the southeast coast. Given rising waters, the living areas were now four feet beneath the FEMA floodplain.
The clients had fond memories in the house and didn’t want to tear it down. Instead, the solution was to raise the existing house seven feet, add a new foundation and deck, and convert the newly elevated garage into the primary bedroom. It’s “easier than it sounds,” assures cofounder Michael Frederick, who tapped Wolfe House and Building Movers and their “computerized hydraulic lifts” to raise the structure while general contractor Andy Meloan of A&D Home Builders rebuilt the foundation with concrete masonry units and poured concrete. Reinforcing bars and steel-threaded rods now run through it, up the house’s walls, and to the roof, where they’re bolted to withstand 140 mile-an-hour hurricane winds.
To defend against tropical storms, Frederick and Frederick installed impact-rated windows (double-paned Sun Glass by Andersen). Every window needs to be durable in these settings, Frederick explained. “If even one breaks in a hurricane situation, the pressure differentiation is so great that it kind of explodes a house,” he says. He also specified a new standing seam aluminum roof, which wards off heat, protects against lightning, and shucks off leaves.
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Moisture is another adversary of architecture in coastal South Carolina and the southeastern US. “During the 1970s and ’80s, we were using building codes from the north that led to enormous problems in this part of the country,” explains Frederick. “Those codes put vapor barriers on the inside of the insulation, which traps moisture in the walls.” Current best practices call for the opposite, he says: “Waterproofing on the outside of the sheathing, then a space between the sheathing and siding.”
Ultimately, visionary thinking is one of a climate-responsive renovation’s most crucial building materials. “Where many would have seen a tear-down, we were able to envision a sustainable future for the house,” says Frederick.
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