MP Boston’s Winthrop Center Earns Inaugural Passive House Trailblazer Award

The Passive House Network has honored MP Boston with the 2022 Passive House Trailblazer award for the development of Winthrop Center.

The forthcoming 691-foot, mixed-use tower in the heart of Boston contains 812,000 square feet of office space built to Passive House standards for building performance and energy conservation. Upon completion in 2023, Winthrop Center will be the largest Passive House office building in the world, modeling program’s most energy efficient solution for large scale buildings and leading the industry into the future.

According to the Passive House organization, a typical Class A building in Boston’s existing stock uses 150% more energy, and existing LEED Platinum buildings in Boston use 60% more energy than Winthrop Center’s office space is expected to use once completed. Winthrop Center’s energy efficient design advances Boston’s climate change mitigation efforts. If the reduction in energy use and greenhouse gas emissions resulting from Winthrop Center’s Passive House design were applied to existing building stock in Boston, the City would save three million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions. This savings would drive City emissions from 6.4 million tons of CO2 to 3.4 million tons of CO2, a full 10-12 years ahead of the City’s goal.

“With Class A office space expected to expand by billions of square feet between now and 2050, application of Passive House cannot come soon enough or spread fast enough in this ongoing fight against climate change,” said Passive House Network board chair, Craig Stevenson. “MP Boston is a true trailblazer for employing Passive House methods at a size and scale that has never been done before.”

While integrating health and wellness, sustainability and technology, Winthrop Center will deliver 812,000 square feet of Class A office space and 510,000 square feet of residential space, including 321 luxury residences to the center of Boston. Winthrop Center’s office space is a pilot project for Passive House development, representing the first time a developer has applied the Passive House approach to a building of this size, scale and typology.

Winthrop Center is the most energy efficient large-scale building ever built in a cold climate, where the Passive House application is critically important because Passive House dramatically lowers heating demand. The building incorporates a well-insulated building façade, air-tight exterior envelope, and advanced energy recovery ventilation (ERV) system for its office space. In addition to eliminating heating and cooling inefficiencies, this integrated system allows the building to deliver better managed and higher quality air, positively impacting employee health, productivity and sense of well-being.