ABSTRACT
Marisa Egea and Alejandro Herrera, architects who founded the firm INHAB in Mexico City, had to surmount more than their share of difficult obstacles in their first PH retrofit. Herrera and Egea applied their expertise to the apartment owned by the clients who would need no convincing: Herrera and Gerlinde, his wife. They dubbed the completed retrofit the Taller PassivHaus (TAPHA), because they hoped the renovated apartment, where they were able to work out how to adapt PH principles to their specific climate, would also serve as a workshop for others to learn about energy efficiency and sustainable architecture. They decided to create an insulating envelope around the entire structure, so that the only remaining thermal bridges would be those where the steel structure connects to the existing building. When first planning for the retrofit, PHI staff pointed out that thermal bridging through the steel structure could result in major heat losses.
