When architect Dan Heinfeld, FAIA, designed and built a new home for his family in Newport Beach, Calif., it had to be green. Heinfeld, the president of LPA Architects in nearby Irvine, saw his own house as the best opportunity to showcase his firm’s commitment to green practices. Heinfeld’s love of the iconic Los Angeles mid-20th century case-study houses, especially their emphasis on indoor/outdoor living, was also a key inspiration for this sustainable home.

“This house was an opportunity for me to practice what I preach,” says Heinfeld, who designed the 2006 residence for himself, his wife and their teenage daughter. “It would be hard to sell green to my clients if I don’t live it myself.”

Heinfeld wanted to use the Chestnut House. In his words, “One of largest deterrents to wider adoption of green design practices is the myth that green costs more. This house demonstrates my firm’s belief that every project can have a green quotient regardless of budget or program. We call it ‘Mainstream Green.’” The design process was a search for current best practices and a marriage of passive and active systems to create a cost-effective green vernacular as a model for the community.

The site on Chestnut Place in Newport Beach is a 9,000-square-foot corner lot, which Heinfeld acquired as a vacant property. The picturesque location sits on top of a knoll about a mile from the Pacific Ocean.

“The concept from the beginning,” says Heinfeld, “was to use the California traditional courtyard, and to marry it with sustainable design best practices.”

The two-story, four-bedroom, four-bath Chestnut House wraps around a central courtyard on three sides, lined by 10-foot-wide pocket glass and screen doors that allow the interior spaces to completely open to the outside space. The courtyard’s microclimate is used to passively heat and cool the house by taking advantage of prevailing breezes and the solar-heated pool’s consistent temperature.

The two-story great room provides for night flushing in the summer, and a whole-house fan vents the space as required. The house can be opened or closed depending on the weather conditions, allowing the occupants to shape their living environment. Private spaces, including two of the four bedrooms, are located upstairs — to the sides of the great room — and connected by a perforated plywood “bridge” on the second story that allows light and air to move through the horizontal structure and ventilate the house.

A large translucent skylight, which has insulation properties similar to an R-11 wall, lights the kitchen area of the great room.

In addition to its passive green features, the Chestnut House includes some of the latest active technologies. A 5.3-kW photovoltaic panel system has been integrated into the ENERGY STAR cool roof, which provides for virtually all of the home’s energy needs. In addition, a solar heating system for the pool was oversized by 100 percent to provide a consistent heating source for this important recreational amenity and passive feature.

To keep the Chestnut House on budget and prove Heinfeld’s assertion that green buildings do not have to cost more than standard ones, these more expensive active systems were made affordable by the trade-offs in the choice of simple, but handsome, materials used on the house. Integral color plasters require no paint. Douglas fir siding was used for the exterior, and drywall with low-VOC paint was added throughout the interior. The terrazzo floor, which is used extensively in the great room, is made from recycled glass and aggregates, and completes the passive systems.

“To me, Chestnut House is more than a functional and attractive home for our family,” says architect Heinfeld. “The house proves my deeply held philosophy that sustainable design is about added value, not added cost. The environmental and health benefits combined with sustainability’s role as a design partner makes for an architecture that is timeless and regional, that is very valuable in today’s homogenous world.

“Sustainable homes — indeed, all sustainable buildings — are the marriage between time-honored design practices and the best of new technologies available today,” he continues. “Sustainability is not a trend or fad. It’s a value decision. Sustainability should no longer be viewed as an alternative design and building practice, but instead the preferred design and building practice.”

PROJECT TEAM

ARCHITECT: LPA, INC.
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT: LPA, INC.
GENERAL CONTRACTOR: ROBERT MCCARTHY CONTRACTORS, INC.

KEY GREEN FEATURES

GREEN PRODUCTS

INTERIOR
ECOSHIELD BY DUNN EDWARDS — NON-VOC PAINT
HERMOSA TERRAZZO, INC. — TERRAZZO FLOOR: RECYCLED CONTENT
INTERFACE FLOR COMMERCIAL — CARPET TILES

PLUMBING FIXTURES
KOHLER

LIGHTING/SOLAR AND CONTROLS
LUTRON: SIVOIA QED — SOLAR CONTROL/SHADES
CARMEL ARCHITECTURAL SALES — KALWALL SKYLIGHT
AUDIO IMAGES, INC. — LIGHTING CONTROLS AND A/V
VANTAGE CONTROLS, INC. — LIGHTING CONTROLS

EXTERIOR
SOLAR INTEGRATED TECHNOLOGIES, INC. — 5.3-KW BUILDING INTEGRATED PHOTOVOLTAIC (BIPV)
SOLAR INTEGRATED TECHNOLOGIES — COOL ROOF
SUNTREK — SOLAR HEATING FOR POOL
SNYDER ASSOCIATES — CALIFORNIA-FRIENDLY LANDSCAPE AND WEATHER SENSOR IRRIGATION SYSTEMS
TREX — DECKING MATERIAL