Year-rounder House

Year-rounder House | Add-on ’13 Competition (w/Michael Alexander) | Wellfleet, MA

The town of Wellfleet has sought to increase its supply of affordable housing through a new bylaw which allows an accessory dwelling to be built on the lot of an existing home. Year-rounder House is a prototype dwelling intended to respond to this bylaw; it draws on the two vernaculars of the Outer Cape – the traditional, gabled Cape house and the Modernist shed house – and filters them through today’s best practices in construction technology. The house is insulated and air-sealed to PassivHaus standards and, coupled with an energy-recovery ventilation system, it provides high indoor air quality without sacrificing energy efficiency. A large southern window allows the winter sun to penetrate deep into the house, with a fixed horizontal shading system to mitigate the summer sun.