The Distillery North Proves How Energy-efficient Multifamily Buildings Can Be 

To keep us comfortable and productive, the buildings where we live and work consume energy, in turn emitting greenhouse gasses. Here in Boston, commercial, industrial, and large residential buildings generate 51% of the city’s greenhouse gas emissions, and small residential buildings account for nearly 20%. But there are ways to dramatically cut the energy appetite of buildings, and it can be done with relatively simple design and construction methods while creating structures that perform better and last longer. 

The Distillery North in Boston, with its 28 rental apartments, was one of the pioneering developments on the East Coast to be certified according to the Passive House standards. The result is a building that uses 90% less energy for heating and cooling and 60% less energy overall compared to a similar code-compliant new building. All this while giving its residents thermal comfort, acoustic insulation, and lower electricity bills. 

Evolution of The Distillery

The Distillery North is the initiative of property owner Frederick Gordon, who purchased the former Felton Rum Distillery site in 1984. The factory complex had been making alcoholic beverages since the 1860’s, and was the last operational rum distillery in what was once a booming New England industry. As Gordon went on to acquire the full block at 1st Street and Dorchester, the 110,000 sq/ft factory building was becoming a favored location for artists seeking studio workspace, and for decades The Distillery has been one of the city’s main locations for artist live/work space and a longstanding haven for artists and craftspeople. 

Gordon, a Harvard graduate with a Ph.D. in philosophy from University of California San Diego, appreciated preserving affordable workspace for artists and had been growing more concerned about global climate change, testing new technologies and energy retrofits on the historical building over the years. After learning about Passive House, and finding no local architecture firms who were knowledgeable of it, Gordon traveled to Darmstadt, Germany to learn about buildings that could stay warm through the winter without turning on a furnace.

Gordon assembled a team including Boston-based ICON Architects and consultant Adam Cohen and his firm Passive Structures. What emerged was an elegant four-story apartment building with ground floor commercial space and room for My Diner, a beloved local eatery that had lost its lease nearby due to rising rents. The aesthetics of The Distillery North were designed to blend in with the brick factory building which it adjoins, while also standing out, with its distinctive orange terracotta tile facade visible from across the Boston Harbor Reserved Channel.

What is Passive House?

The Passive House building science emerged in Germany nearly 30 years ago. While not unheard of in the U.S., it long remained the niche of ultra-low energy design enthusiasts, typically creating custom single-family homes. But this has been changing in recent years as cities and developers push for deep carbon cuts in the built environment. When The Distillery North opened its doors in 2017 it was the first multifamily Passive House project in Massachusetts. Today the state has more than 60 certified buildings and counting, from affordable housing developments to luxury homes. The movement has even shaped the downtown Boston skyline: the new 52-story Winthrop Center Tower boasts 25 stories of Passive House certified premium office space, making it the world’s tallest Passive House office building.

Achieving Passive House certification through PHIUS, one of the two certification bodies operating in the U.S., is a detailed process, and the architects and builders of The Distillery North had to expand their knowledge to achieve it. The certification process requires careful engineering in the planning phase, testing during construction, and performance verification upon completion.

Building The Distillery North

Methods of achieving the stringent performance standards are deceptively simple. The Distillery North was given extensive thermal insulation with blown cellulose, Rockwool, and polystyrene (though use of foam insulation was minimized due to the material’s higher embodied carbon). The structure’s thermal bridges were minimized, breaking the points where outdoor temperatures could conduct into the interior spaces. Solar orientation was optimized, with special attention given to the balcony roofs on the courtyard side, ensuring they deflect hot summer sun while allowing for winter solar gain. And the envelope of the building was meticulously sealed and tested with a series of blower-door tests, wherein the entire structure is pressurized to identify air leaks. Only once the monolith of the building passed its air-tightness tests were openings cut for the doors and windows. All units were outfitted with triple-pane tilt-turn windows built by Ireland-based Klearwall.

Because Passive House buildings are so air sealed, indoor spaces are fed fresh air with Heat Recovery Ventilators, a mechanical air handling system that pumps in oxygen-rich outdoor air through high-grade filters. As it extracts stale indoor air, a heat exchanger equalizes the temperatures between the two airstreams, conserving indoor temperatures with up to 95% efficiency. Each apartment in The Distillery North has its own Heat Recovery Ventilator (with MERV 13 filters) that can be controlled by the resident. 

Additional energy-saving features include LED recessed lighting that reduces electricity use and heat, induction cooktops (that also eliminate indoor air pollution from natural gas ranges and stoves), and ducted and ductless Mitsubishi mini-split heat pumps for heating and cooling.

The outcome was a project built without a cost-premium, with the more expensive elements offset by efficiencies such as smaller HVAC systems and reduced ducting. While Gordon chose not to LEED certify the building, all new buildings in Boston are required to be certifiable at the Silver level. The Distillery North goes far beyond this baseline, earning 98 points and exceeding LEED Platinum.

Passive House buildings are admired for their high resident comfort, durability and moisture control, and resilience to extreme climate events and power outages. But the chief achievement of buildings like The Distillery North is dramatically cutting energy consumption. 

Best in Class Energy Efficiency