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Welcome to Hotel Marcel—the largest Passive House-certified hotel in the country, it operates fully on renewable energy, without any use of fossil fuels.
Originally designed by Marcel Breuer for the Armstrong Rubber Company’s New Haven, Conn., headquarters, the 1960s Brutalist structure consists of a floating concrete box with deeply recessed windows. The historic building sat abandoned for years until architect Bruce Redman Becker decided to purchase it and turn it into a highly sustainable boutique hotel.
Passive House certification, managed by Passive House Institute (PHI), is the only internationally recognized performance standard for air tightness and energy consumption, verified with field-tested energy modeling. Over 5,600 buildings in the world have earned Passive House certification, of which only 140 are in the United States. Hotel Marcel is the first hotel with over 100 rooms to be certified in the world. The project is also one of the few LEED Platinum-certified hotels in the country.
Achieving this top-tier level of energy performance, in an existing 1960s building, has generated a lot of interest. “Two major hotel chains have sent their top engineering and sustainability leadership to Hotel Marcel with hopes of replicating our successful efforts and two other hotel groups have engaged me as a consultant to decarbonize their portfolios,” reports Bruce Redman Becker, FAIA, PHCD, LEED AP, Becker + Becker. Westport, Conn.
While Becker’s undertaking of a Passive House renovation was ambitious, a number of the building’s qualities made it a good candidate for the transformation. For example, the simple, box-shaped structure was easier to insulate and condition than others. The ultra-high-performance concrete offered thermal insulating mass and the Mosai-style concrete panels, with windows inset a full 30 inches from the façade, provided excellent passive shading.
Tighten the Building Envelope
Tightening the building envelope was a key strategy for achieving Passive House performance criteria. “The pre-cast MoSai concrete panels were air-sealed and coated with high-performance insulation on their concealed interior surface, and air-sealing tapes and Aerogel blanketing were used to complete the thermal isolation of the windows without adding thickness to the original wall assembly,” explains Becker.
The original windows were replaced with triple-glazed, argon-filled, laminated windows. In addition to the insulation, the windows also act as acoustic dampeners which is key as the hotel sits...