About This Project

Wheaton College’s Pine Hall is Massachusetts’s first passive house student housing building and features INTUS Arcade steel reinforced triple pane polymer tilt & turn window and balcony doors. In addition to a PHIUS certification, the energy performance goals are sufficiently aggressive to meet Net Zero or even Net Positive standards.  It is also New England Real Estate Journal’s Project of the Month! The 45,000 SF project in Norton will have 178 beds for undergraduate student housing, a common room, and incorporates the campus green adjacent to the buildings, providing views and connections to the main campus. “We expect our PHIUS residence hall to be 70% more energy-efficient than buildings that meet the standard state code,” said Brian Douglas, Wheaton’s executive vice president of finance and administration. “These energy savings are meaningful to us, given our deep commitment to sustainability.” He adds that it will take only 10 to 12 years for the college to recoup, through energy savings, the small premium for the PHIUS design. After that, the net savings will accrue. – NEREJ “The envelope, windows, rooftop PVs, and HVAC systems are all fine-tuned to PHIUS criteria, making the Lower Campus Residence Hall one of the lowest cost-per-student living facilities in the Northeast.” – SGA Architecture Video credit: Kenneth Kiefer and SIGA