Active vs. Passive Design: How Solar Pergolas Improve Outdoor Comfort and Energy Efficiency
We get asked fairly often where a product like ours actually fits between passive design and active design, since it doesn’t cleanly belong to either category on its own. It’s a fair question, and it’s worth answering directly rather than assuming everyone already has the distinction straight, because active design vs passive design isn’t just […]
Passive Building Principles in 2026
Every year we work on outdoor shading and solar structures, we’re reminded that the best-performing projects aren’t the ones with the most equipment — they’re the ones where the building itself was designed to do less work in the first place. That’s the idea behind passive building: shaping a structure so it holds a comfortable […]
Powerful Passive Design Strategies in 2026
When we talk about cutting energy use in a home or commercial space, our first instinct is often to reach for more equipment — bigger HVAC units, more panels, more automation. But in 2026, we’re seeing a real shift back toward a much older idea: designing buildings and outdoor spaces so they need less mechanical […]
What Are the 5 Elements of Passive Solar Design?
Passive solar design is one of the older ideas in building science, and it’s built around a fairly simple observation: a structure can be arranged to collect, store, and release the sun’s heat on its own, without relying on furnaces or heat pumps to do all the work. When we’re asked to explain passive solar […]
How to Design a Passive House: The 5 Core Principles
To design a passive house, focus on five core areas: continuous insulation, airtight construction, high-performance windows and solar-gain control, balanced ventilation with heat recovery, and thermal-bridge-free detailing. When we talk with clients about a passive house project, we usually walk through five core principles that tend to show up in one form or another across […]
How Much Does a Motorized Louvered Pergola Cost?
There is no reliable single price for a motorized louvered pergola because cost varies by size, materials, automation, site conditions, installation, and local requirements. Below, we’ve broken down what actually drives the price of a motorized pergola system, what kind of ranges tend to show up across the industry, and a few additional costs that […]
Which Motorized Pergola System Is the Best?
We get asked this question fairly often, and the honest answer is that there isn’t one motorized pergola system that works best for every property. The right choice depends on the climate a structure will sit in, how the space underneath will be used, and what someone is hoping to get out of the investment […]
7 Factors That Drive Motorized Pergola Cost in 2026
When someone asks us why one motorized pergola quote came in noticeably higher than another, the answer is almost never a single line item — it’s usually a combination of several factors stacking on top of each other. Rather than walking through price ranges again, we wanted to break down the specific variables that tend […]
The Latest Trends in Sustainable Architecture
Sustainable architecture has moved past the point of being a differentiator on a project brief. In 2026, sustainable architecture is receiving greater attention through updated certification frameworks, building requirements, and growing interest in building performance. We spend most of our time on the outdoor shading and solar side of this industry, but the broader shifts […]
4 Sustainable Construction Trends to Watch for in 2026
Sustainable architecture gets a lot of attention at the design stage, but a lot of what actually determines a building’s environmental impact happens during construction itself — what gets torn down versus reused, what materials go into the envelope, and how the finished building is monitored once it’s occupied. We wanted to step back from […]
