Laura Nettleton

Laura Nettleton is an architect who has studied low energy solutions since the early 1980s, when she worked on passive solar projects. Her career has been focused on retrofits as she understood early on embodied energy in most existing buildings, is a large number! She completed one of the first LEED projects in Pittsburgh but longed for better energy performance.

After she was introduced to passive house, she served as a champion in the Pittsburgh region and her office, Thoughtful Balance, designed one of the first large scale passive house retrofits in North America. Thoughtful Balance completed many landmark passive house projects, including two passive house libraries, and a variety of passive house retrofits.

Laura realizes human health is key to messaging in her design work and she demonstrated how passive house delivers superior air quality in several projects. Laura is known as a skilled presenter and writer and has presented nationally and internationally. She has recently turned her focus to changing the culture around how we think about buildings, realizing a unified cultural response is essential to reaching our goals. She is heartened by previous cultural transformations and is convinced changing our minds is every bit as important as changing our buildings.