I was delighted to be able to visit the Austrian Passive House in the Lost Lake area of Whistler during our recent RV travels through British Columbia.

The house was recently gifted to Whistler from the Austrian Olympic Team and provides club room for mountain biking and nordic skiing clubs.

It was designed as a family house for 5 and used as the HQ for the Austrian olympic committees, teams and press during the 2010 winter games.

Claimed to be the greenest building at Whistler, the Austrian Passive House was designed in Austria but built by local contractors using imported materials (incl timbers?) from Austria. ‘Legacy’ crops up on all the web search, that the building outlive the Olympics and provide demonstration of passiv haus concepts, using less than a tenth of energy an equivalent local Canadian house would use. It was the first (and only?) Passiv Haus accredited building in Canada

The Austrian House dominates a key entry point to the Lost Lakes area that provides stunningly smooth singletrack biking (and I guess XC skiing in winter). I couldnt shake the apprehension however of cycling around a singletrack bend into a bear. We had seen plenty of bears on our travels, including at Whistler, and the fresh bear scat, along with the ripening berries, a favourite bear treat in a food-stressed area, added to the apprehension.

Links:

Austrian passive house   The Greenest House at the Games 

Whistler Bears : Bear death toll continues to rise

Construction Video