What Tony and Steven learned at the 2026 Passive House conference

Tony and Steven headed to Auckland this year for the 2026 Passive House Institute NZ (PHINZ) conference at the Waipuna Conference Centre — their first time attending, and, as Tony puts it, "we'll be back." Fourteen hours of sessions, workshops and conversations later, they came home with more than a few pages of notes.

A room full of the right people

Part of what made the conference worthwhile was who else was in it. Two of the Passivhaus builders Tony works with regularly, Luke Dunn of LWD and Brad Holmes of Minden Developments, were also there — a reminder that high-performance building in New Zealand is still a fairly close-knit community, and one where the design and construction sides genuinely benefit from being in the same room.

Building something together, under pressure

The standout session had the room split into small teams to work through the technical sequencing of an upgrade to an existing A-frame home — each person assigned one part of the puzzle, from the roof and floor through to windows, ventilation and heating. Steven took the floor brief; Tony took ventilation; Brad and Luke were scattered across other teams entirely. Each team could only communicate through one nominated person, which meant a lot of careful listening and honest trade-offs before a workable solution came together.

It's an exercise built to stress-test collaboration rather than to reflect the kind of new-build work Tony and Steven do day to day, but the lesson translated directly: the earlier the whole team — architects and designers, builders, and building science specialists — are talking to each other, the fewer surprises show up on site later. Tony's own contribution was bringing ventilation specialist Cam Kilgour of Fantech onto his team. Watching how Cam approached the Zehnder ventilation system in real time, thinking through airflow, room by room, was one of the most useful hours of the whole conference.

Suppliers doing the technical heavy lifting

Alongside the workshops, Tony and Steven spent time with several of the suppliers whose products sit behind a genuinely airtight, well-ventilated home: Ambiance windows by Starke, Fantech, Stiebel Eltron, Formance, Pro Clima, Rothoblaas and Optimal Windows among them. Conversations like these are where the theory of a Passive House build meets the practical detail — the junctions, membranes and components that quietly do the work of keeping a home comfortable and efficient for decades.

What it means for the next build

The keynotes reached well beyond the residential scale too, with a look at how Passive House principles hold up in large, multi-unit developments — a useful reminder that the same building science underpinning a considered family home scales up just as sensibly to bigger projects.

For Tony and Steven, the biggest single takeaway wasn't a new product or detail — it was a renewed appreciation for bringing the whole team to the table early. Builders, ventilation specialists, and the design team, all aligned on performance goals before the first sod is turned. It's the same principle that's underpinned every one of Imagine Architecture's 1,100+ commissions since 2002 — and after a first PHINZ conference like this one, it's only going to get sharper.