Front Flats Update

It’s hard to believe it’s been 8 years since we broke ground on Front Flats in Philadelphia’s Norris Square neighborhood.

What started as a challenging urban infill site, sandwiched right along the Market-Frankford Line elevated train, is now a thriving multi-family community featuring a quiet sunken courtyard, industrial Cor-Ten steel details, and a high-performance building envelope clad in vertical solar panels.

Front Flats was never just another residential build for us. It was an ambitious, real-world experiment in decarbonization, urban density, and building performance, and one we learned immense lessons from.

By pairing an ultra-airtight passive house enclosure with integrated vertical PV solar panels and balanced ERV ventilation, we turned an awkward transit-adjacent lot into a net-positive building that generates more energy than it consumes.

Best of all? Years of post-occupancy performance data prove these building science strategies actually hold up in the real world, delivering exceptionally low EUIs, unmatched thermal comfort, and clean indoor air quality for our residents year after year.

Here’s to pushing the boundaries of high-performance housing for the next 8 years and beyond!

#PhiladelphiaArchitecture     #PassiveHouse     #NetPositive     #HighPerformanceBuilding #Decarbonization     #BuildingScience     #UrbanInfill