By combining Passive House principles and modular construction on an affordable senior housing development, the team behind La Mora, a four-story independent living community in Yonkers, N.Y., delivered a resilient, energy-efficient home for residents aged 62 and older.
From the start of the project, Wilson Kimball, president and CEO of the Municipal Housing Authority for the City of Yonkers (MHACY), wanted to ensure that the planned affordable senior housing development could withstand the effects of severe weather, so residents could shelter in place during a power outage.
As the former planning commissioner for Yonkers, the third largest city in New York, Wilson knew the debilitating impact that extreme weather events can have on residents. Severe snowstorms, for instance, can leave people stranded in their homes without power for days, which can be especially hard on seniors. “I really wanted La Mora Senior Apartments to be a place that could function on its own if the worst should happen,” Kimball says.
To that end, Kimball asked the design team at Perkins Eastman (New York) to apply Passive House standards to La Mora, which opened in July 2024. Passive House comprises design principles for a highly energy-efficient and resilient building, reducing reliance on heating and cooling systems—and mitigating the impact of worst-case weather scenarios and power outages.
“I realized that not only was Passive House a good idea, but [add this word here?] it was almost a necessity if we keep having freak weather patterns,” Kimball says, adding that an on-site generator would further support La Mora’s resilience.
Pursuing Passive House
One key feature of Passive House is an airtight building envelope. With continuous insulation, La Mora’s envelope does not let air in or out, so the building is more energy efficient.
The continuous insulation also eliminates thermal bridges, such as corners where heat can easily escape. “With Passive House, you can heat or cool a building with a minimal amount of energy,” says Stuart Lachs, residential practice leader at Perkins Eastman and principal in charge on the project.
But because the building is so airtight, it also needs an energy recovery system that provides air circulation by bringing fresh air inside and taking stale air outside.
This system has an added benefit: It uses the conditioned air it removes from within the building to cool the incoming air on hot days or warm the incoming air on cold days. As a result, La Mora’s cooling and heating system works less and uses less energy.
The envelope was just one consideration, however. “Passive House is a holistic approach, it’s not just the building envelope,” Lachs says.
For instance, to achieve Passive House certification, La Mora also had to earn Energy Star and Indoor Airplus certifications, the Environmental Protection Agency’s designations for energy efficiency and indoor air quality. The team used efficient appliances and fixtures for the all-electric building, as well as paints without volatile organic compounds.
Passive House meets modular construction
Passive House wasn’t La Mora’s only innovative design goal. To save on labor costs, MHACY decided to forego traditional stick-built construction and instead use modular construction, with modules manufactured in a Pennsylvania factory and then assembled on-site.
Modular construction also provided the advantage of simultaneous scheduling: building modules along with their interiors under climate-controlled factory conditions while at the same time laying the foundation and completing other outdoor work. In 2023, La Mora’s modules were built in the factory while the foundation and other site work was completed.
But to gain the time savings of simultaneous scheduling, the team had to make sure the modules were completed and delivered to the site exactly when the construction crew was ready for them. “With modular construction, the schedule has to be very tight, so you have to plan ahead,” Kimball says.
La Mora’s more than 90 modules each measured 12 to 14 feet in width, so they could be transported by highway from the Pennsylvania-based factory.
In July 2023, the modules arrived in Yonkers with almost fully completed interiors, including lighting and plumbing fixtures. The on-site work included the electrical and plumbing connections as well as some interior finishes, such as the ceramic tile backsplashes, to avoid damage during transport.
While the module delivery and assembly went smoothly, the team encountered an unanticipated challenge. While Passive House requires an airtight envelope, modular construction consists of lots of boxes that are connected.
“Modular construction introduced all these joints between all the modules, and the joints ended up being a lot bigger than we expected,” Lachs says, which made La Mora’s building envelope not as airtight as needed.
The team quickly identified and applied a solution: a high-performance tape to seal all the joints, in addition to extra insulation. The takeaway, Kimball says, is that modules should be made and tested to Passive House standards during manufacturing and prior to assembly—not after. “Test early and test often,” she says.
The effort paid off, however, and in 2024, the team took one of the final tests for Passive House certification: the blower door test, which measures the amount of air that leaks from a building. La Mora’s blower door result came in well under the Passive House minimum requirement, according to Lachs.
Even with the extra time spent on sealing, the modular building went up quickly thanks to the modular approach, Kimball says, adding that the project took less than two years from groundbreaking to completion.
Pride of place
MHACY wanted La Mora to be not just an efficient building with low operational costs, but also a beautiful home for its residents. “A lot of our public housing buildings are from the 1960s and 1970s, and we did not want to have that look and feel for La Mora,” Kimball says.
The community comprises 60 one- and two-bedroom apartments. The project team prioritized market-rate aesthetics, with an interior design featuring bamboo paneling in the elevators and mailroom, high-quality vinyl flooring and ceramic tiles in the lobby and community room, and quartz countertops in the resident kitchens.
“La Mora is a well-built, durable building that will serve the housing authority for many years to come,” Lachs says.
Kimball adds, “And at the end of the day, it’s a beautiful building anyone would want to live in.”
Novid Parsi is a St. Louis-based freelance writer and can be reached at [email protected].
La Mora Senior Living Project details
Project: La Mora Senior Living
Location: Yonkers, N.Y.
Completion date: July 2024
Owner: La Mora LLC
Total building area: 59,987 sq. ft.
Total construction cost: $29.8 million
Cost/sq. ft.: $497.16
Architect: Perkins Eastman Architects
Interior designer: Perkins Eastman Architects
General contractor: Andron Construction Corporation
Engineer: Smith Miller Associates, Andron Construction Corporation
Carpet/flooring: Armstrong Flooring, Engineered Floors, Casalgrande Padana,
MSI Surfaces
Modular: Signature Building Systems of PA LLC.
Doors/locks/hardware: Accurate, Falcon, Glynn-Johnson, Ives, Schlage, Von Duprin, Zero
Unified Door & Hardware Group.
Furniture—seating/casegoods: Wolf Cabinets, Wolf Home Products
Handrails/wall guards: Inpro
Lighting: ASD, Progress Lighting, Visa Lighting, Lumencia, Lithonia, AFX, Kichler, Benfield Lighting Services
Signage/wayfinding: Crown Sign Systems Inc.
Surfaces—solid/other: MSI
Other: EVBox (EV charger)
Project details are provided by the design team and not vetted by Environments for Aging.
