Passive House Multi-Family Project- Kiln Apartments

The Kiln Apartments of Portland, Oregon are positioned to be one of the largest mixed-use, multi-family buildings at such a high energy efficiency standards. With the target design goal to meet and exceed Passive House requirements, the Kiln apartment is said to be the largest Passive House project in the U.S.

At these aggressive energy efficient standards, the building is actually required to be 65-75 percent better than Portland’s industry leading building codes.

The Kiln passive house apartment complex includes 19-units topping over ground floor retail on the first level. Located in North Portland, OR, the 18,000 square foot building includes Isokorb® structural thermal breaks in the canopy overhangs at ground level. With the implementation of a highly insulated envelope, the design team of Kiln apartments ensured thermal bridges were avoided.

In addition, Kiln incorporated triple-pane wood windows, space heating through wall-mounted, hot water radiant heaters served from solar thermal roof panels, continuous (24 hours a day) ventilation through a centralized heat recovery ventilator, and deeply inset, south-facing windows protected from unwanted solar heat gain by sunshades.

This is just one example of the effectiveness of continuous thermal break structural elements and how Schock Isokorb® will solve difficult load bearing conditions. Our Schock Isokorb® product applications includes a wide scope of concrete to concrete balconies cantilevers and steel to steel structural connections with advanced material design and cost effective thermal break solutions.

Kiln Apartments construction was completed in June 2014.

Design Team:

Architect: GBD Architects

Structural Engineer: KPFF Engineers

General Contractor:  Lorenz Bruun Construction