Moothart Residence Earns Cincinnati Design Award

The Moothart Residence, a deep energy retrofit of a single-family home in Cincinnati, Ohio, earned an Honorable Mention Award for Building Architecture: Small Scale at the 2023 Cincinnati Design Awards. The Cincinnati Design Awards (CDA) recognizes the best built-environment design produced by Cincinnati-area firms, and promotes and social and economic value of good design.

The Cincinnati home, a 2382 sq. ft. brick structure built in 1895, utilized Passive House principles to achieve Net Zero Energy and LEED Platinum certification. The design also used these passive strategies as aesthetic opportunities, seeking a visual expression of the sustainable interventions, and celebrating the juxtaposition between historic and contemporary materials. Sol design + consulting provided architectural design, sustainability consulting, and LEED certification services for the project.

“We are honored to receive this Cincinnati Design Award,” said Sanyog Rathod, President and CEO of Sol design + consulting. “This project shows how design and performance, when considered holistically, can support one another, and yield a solution that is greater than the sum of its parts.”

The design pursued an “efficiency first” approach, utilizing passive design principles to reduce energy use by 86%. These included wrapping the home in insulation, reducing air leakage by 90%, and providing a fresh air system with heat recovery. The remaining heating and cooling needs are met with an electric heat pump. The home is so efficient that a 19-panel 7.6kW solar array not only supplies the home with 100% of its energy needs annually—it also produces enough excess to power the homeowner’s electric vehicle, with additional surplus to spare, making the home a net energy producer.

The design of the home sought to juxtapose the new interventions with the historic architecture. The cladding peels back at the corners, expressing its applied nature. The elemental form, with eaves removed, expresses the home’s unbroken thermal enclosure. Aluminum shades on the east and west are both important passive interventions and a key part of the home’s aesthetic. In the kitchen, clean white cabinets sit next to an exposed brick wall; the stair to the renovated attic celebrates an original plaster wall.

“We would not be celebrating this project if it wasn’t for the homeowner, Casey Moothart, and his vision for a sustainable, Net Zero retrofit,” said Rathod. "We share the honor of this award with him."

Sol design + consulting worked closely with the builder, Creative Contracting, and the homeowner, Casey Moothart, on this project. You can learn more about the project here.