New York City, New York

Zero Block is a design series that explores the quadrant of a city block as a background on which design interventions are proposed - with the goal of transforming the city, building by building, into a site net-zero, or net-positive, energy consumer.  

Using a combination of strategies, including passive house retrofits and the installation of renewable energy generators, Zero Block aims to take the existing building stock and to develop a build-able solution that can be deployed to dramatically reduce the energy consumption of the existing building stock in the city.

The first case study illustrates a proposal for retrofitting a New York City Housing Authority residence in the lower east side into a net-zero energy housing development.