Clean Air: The Next Luxury Apartment Perk

When buyers of real-estate developer John Roe’s seven condos walk into their new Manhattan homes sometime after May next year, Mr Roe wants them to breathe deep and feel good about it. That’s because he has spared no expense on air quality.

The boutique building, called Charlotte of the Upper West Side, is being constructed with an airtight external shell. Fresh air, tempered, filtered and then treated with ultraviolet light, will be constantly pumped into each room, while the same amount of used air is extracted. If a resident is worried—say they muttered “God bless you” to a sniffly dinner guest a worrisome number of times last night—they can boost the air exchange in their unit by 120%. Buyers of Mr Roe’s properties will be well aware of how special their air is: Marketing materials, which typically might describe the amenities and luxe touches, include elaborate diagrams and animations describing how the air system works.

The cost of all this magnificent air? The cheapest unit will list at $11 million (A$14.5 million), while penthouses will hit $18 million (A$23.8 million), Mr Roe says. Those price tags are largely due to the location, size and luxury finishes of the units, but the air system wasn’t cheap, either, Mr Roe says. Still, like everything else in real estate that was once the preserve of the elite—think roof decks, gyms, stainless steel—these technologies were already on a path of increased adoption and lower cost. Covid-19 has poured accelerant on the trend.

Executives at some of the country’s largest developers say they believe that by 2030 such systems will be commonplace in all residential development. Buildings with a high degree of mechanical ventilation and energy efficiency will be routine. Indoor sensors will identify when air quality has dropped and automatically increase ventilation. Systems will aim to mitigate outdoor air problems, such as general pollution or smoke from bushfires, as well as indoor threats, such as a sick resident, a burned pot roast or overenthusiastic spraying of lemon polish. Homes will feature dynamic air systems with a “crisis mode” that can upgrade filtration and run a disinfection protocol. Once the threat has been neutralised, systems will return to status quo to save energy.

At the same time, questions remain about what technology is most effective and worth the cost in both dollars and energy use. Will home buyers care about air quality when Covid-19 is no longer affecting daily life?

Scott Walsh, a vice president and project director for Lendlease, a global real estate and investment firm, says he believes that, armed with a new understanding about air quality, consumers will demand homes that improve it.

Already, developers are drawing up blueprints with a focus on fresh air flow, filtration and purification.

“Air quality is now front of mind for our buyers,” says Elisa Orlanski Ours, chief planning and design officer at Corcoran Sunshine, the new development wing of the Corcoran Group real-estate brokerage. Her developer clients are currently exploring how to filter and disinfect the air in both public and private spaces, she says.

The most cutting edge technology today, which will gradually become less expensive and more widespread, is an “energy recovery ventilator,” says Andrea Mancino, executive vice president of New York for Bright Power, an energy management consultant. These are ventilation systems that recapture energy from hot air leaving the building to heat or cool the filtered fresh air going back in.

Air quality experts believe that the wide adoption of MERV 13 or 14 air filters—which the ASHRAE trade group, formerly known as the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers, recommended in April—will be sufficient to manage major particle-related problems. MERV, or “minimum efficiency reporting value,” describes the efficiency of a filter at trapping particles of different sizes.

The pandemic has brought a jolt of interest to systems that go beyond filtering undesirable particles out of the air. Instead, they act upon particles to destroy them, through ultraviolet light, UV photo oxidation, ionization and other tactics. Scientific studies are expected to shed light on which methods and systems are most effective in a home.

“All these products work somewhat differently, and for a lot of these new products, we don’t have good studies to know how well they actually work,” says Max Sherman, the residential team leader of ASHRAE’s epidemic task force.

Gandolfo Schiavone, president of Sav Mor Mechanical, an HVAC company, says that since July his company has installed over 300 air purifiers on buildings’ existing ventilation systems around the New York area. Blueair, a Swedish maker of portable air purifiers that Unilever bought in 2016, has seen triple-digit growth this year, says chief product officer Jonas Holst.

Mr Holst believes that the U.S. will eventually buy air purifiers at the same rate as Asia. “In the U.S., the penetration rate for purifiers is about 15%. In Japan and Korea, about 40% of homes have an air purifier,” he says.

Clean Air — Mr Levitt examines a MERV 13 filter at Lakehouse. Air quality experts believe that the wide adoption of MERV 13 or 14 filters will be sufficient to manage major particle-related problems. PHOTO: DAVID WILLIAMS FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Sensor technology that analyzes indoor air quality is already in use in a handful of new luxury homes. Delos, which founder Paul Scialla describes as a “wellness real estate and technology company,” sells a system that monitors and mitigates air, water and light quality. Through an app, homeowners can see when their air quality drops below optimal standards; the built-in system then triggers ventilation.

In the near future, sensor-based technology that not only detects problems, such as cleaning chemicals in the air, but also responds by, say, automatically ventilating a space, will become widespread, as more manufacturers create better and cheaper systems, contractors learn about them and homeowners demand them, predicts Ryan Donovan, senior category manager for indoor air quality at Ferguson Enterprises, a seller of plumbing and HVAC products. Systems will also become more sensitive: “In 10 years, I do think it’s possible that the sensor will tell you there’s a flu virus,” Mr Donovan says.

Insiders compare the current state of the air quality industry to the early days of the organic food movement, before a U.S. Department of Agriculture standard was formalised. Today, there are a handful of voluntary certifications that speak to air quality, including Passive House and the WELL Building standard, founded by Mr Scialla’s Delos. Whether such labelling will eventually cohere into a government-backed standard, or lead to regulation, isn’t known.

At Lakehouse, a 196-unit condo building in Denver, developer Brian Levitt designed features he hopes will help him achieve the WELL certification “gold” level, he says. The apartments are for sale for US$499,000 to US$1.825 million. Mr Levitt says that residents will get their own ventilated air, furnishings were “off-gassed” in a warehouse for months, and he used low VOC paints and glues. “Buyers may not be willing to pay a premium for WELL yet, but we do think it increased our sales absorption,” and lowers resistance to multifamily living, says Mr Levitt, president of NAVA Real Estate Development.

Air quality is a concern across the price spectrum. Michael Bohn, senior principal at Studio One Eleven, an architecture and design firm based in Long Beach, Calif., redesigned an affordable-housing complex in Santa Ana, Calif., after the pandemic struck. It will now include MERV 14 filters and balconies for each unit.

Indoor air quality cannot widely improve until the building industry finds ways to ventilate, heat, cool, filter and purify air in an energy efficient way. Newly-constructed buildings have the best shot, says Dr Sherman: They can be designed to avoid leakage of air and can use the most efficient mechanical systems. Retrofitting existing buildings while meeting green building standards that will eventually become law is harder, says Derek Tynan, a project engineer with Efficient Energy Compliance, a consulting firm for commercial buildings in New York.

Developers and engineers believe one of the answers lies in dynamic systems that can boost air quality mitigations in times of crisis—thus using more energy—and then reset to a more energy-efficient setting when it is safe to do so.

It’s not clear whether pandemic shock will lead to lasting change. Dan Holohan, an author of 24 books about the steam heat industry, has studied engineering manuals during and after the 1918 flu pandemic. Back then, there was lots of discussion of “the fresh air movement,” but once it was all over, so was any mention of infectious disease, says Mr Holohan.

“Once we get vaccinated, people will forget this ever happened and get back to doing the cheapest thing,” he says.

From the Spring 2024 issue of Kanebridge Quarterly. Order your copy here.

Clinton Cole is what you might call the thinking person’s architect. While most people looking to build or renovate are understandably focused primarily on budget and aesthetics, the motivations of his clients tend to run to deeper roots.

Take, for example, this house in the Sydney suburb of Manly.

With uninterrupted ocean views in one direction and national park in the other, the temptation for the owners was to do as their neighbours had done and build a multi-storey mansion that directed all attention to the water.

An extraordinary site with almost endless possibilities, it sits on a larger parcel of land owned by the Catholic Church and sold as a longhold lease. When the owners bought the lease, there was a small 1960s cottage on the site that was inadequate for the needs of the family of four. Its position sandwiched between bushland and the surf also meant it is within a wildlife corridor and bushfire risk zone.

The clients, who are originally from Austria, wanted a home that would not only take in the ocean view, but make them and their tween-age daughters feel a part of the natural environment, all with an overlay of luxury.

They were also interested — very interested — in making the house as environmentally sustainable as possible, both in its construction and its ongoing functioning.

So when they discussed the brief with Cole, director of CplusC Architects + Builders, rather than talk about bedrooms and bathrooms or European appliances, they expressed how they wanted to experience spaces.

“They’re outdoorsy — it’s kayaks, bikes, paddle boards, bushwalking,” Cole says. “They talked about, at that first meeting, how they really loved the experience of walking through a shallow creek, the canopy of the trees hovering over the creek, that dappled light and the light reflecting off the water and how beautiful that was. I said: great, there’s your concept.”

The little cottage had to go. In its stead, Cole conceived a three-storey, four-bedroom house with study, a spacious eat-in kitchen packed with integrated storage and multiple living areas, including a rumpus room, of sorts.

“They talked about it more as an art room or entertainment room, but the entertainment was more just listening to music and occasionally watching TV,” says Cole.

“It was really a room for doing craft and art — a very craft-driven, rather than an entertainment-driven, rumpus room.”

The site enjoys incredibly views over Manly.

A lower ground garage next to the entry and partially dug into the site provides storage for the family EV, as well as e-scooters, e-bikes, surfboards and two storage batteries to make maximum use of the energy generated from the 66 solar panel, 24.5kw system.

“Initially they only had one battery but they were gifting so much power to the grid that he said, ‘now I’m getting two’.

“They don’t pay a power bill,” says Cole. “There’s also a 15,000L rainwater storage underground next to the pool.”

Key to the concept was the indoor and outdoor spaces becoming one, allowing for abundant natural light and optimum but controlled air flow, as well as a family pool that relies on natural processes for filtration.

“It’s a natural pool so there’s no chlorine,” he says. “There’s frogs and fish in the pool.

“The frogs are having the time of their lives, as are the bandicoots — the site is in a bandicoot corridor as well.”

Placing the pool alongside the living areas — pool fencing regulations notwithstanding — was not just about providing somewhere for the clients to swim, and even fish, when the mood takes them.

“This was an opportunity (to create a space) where they described that dappled light and that feeling of walking up against the flow of a creek,” says Cole. “It was just obvious to put a body of water as the outlook (for the house), and have it on the north side.

“Then you get light dancing on the ceilings and refracting through glass at all different times of year.”

The natural pool is a haven for local wildlife, including bandicoots, birds and frogs.

That desire to refract light also influenced the decision to install coloured glass in the double height living space, creating dynamic interiors that change with the passing of the sun over the day. It reiterates Cole’s position that how you live in your home day to day is often not about the most obvious view.

“Views are great when you walk into a house when you buy it but as time goes on, it’s less important,” he says. “I think Harry Seidler made me aware of this when he designed his own house. He designed his dining room table so he and his wife sat at the pointy end of the table and all the guests sat around looking out to the view.”

After researching the options, they chose to pour the slab using a low carbon concrete called Envisia, by Boral.

“It has about 30 percent of the embodied carbon of normal concrete and it doesn’t cost any more,” he says. “It also has a higher plasticity and a longer curing time. The higher plasticity is beneficial in terms of its slightly better waterproofing qualities.”

Because his team were also responsible for constructing the house, once the foundations were laid, the rest of the house was built from timber.

“We are a carpentry-based team so our workers have those skills to erect structures of that nature — and you can’t get a lower embodied energy than timber,” he says.

The initial plan was to demolish the old cottage and deal with the materials on site, but after careful consideration, it was decided it was not a feasible option.

“The plan was to crush that little house up, crush up the rock that was on the site and then use that for the walls of the landscaping, retaining walls and the garage wall below,” says Cole. “It turned out that retaining that onsite and getting the crusher to do that was about $50k. The (owners) did consider it but if we brought in crushed material, it was about $5k.

“It was a beautiful idea of doing it onsite but the practicalities of storing it and bringing in this 50 tonne crusher didn’t add up.”

Thanks to its position next to national park, the house was also subject to a Bushfire Attack Level (BAL) of 29. While not the highest rating, it meant that all external timbers had to be fire resistant hardwoods.

Choosing to take a wholly sustainable approach came with a higher price tag but not only were the clients willing to pay, they fully understood why they were doing it. Now retired, one of the owners is a former member of the executive team of a global software company that prides itself on achieving a high level of corporate responsibility and he carried that ethos of ESG into this project.

Cole says the clients were intentionally engaged in every aspect of the design and build process, which resulted in more than 30,000 emails being exchanged over the course of the two-year project to nut out the details.

“It meant there was no room for confusion,” says Cole.

Managing light was a key element in this project, with the owners taking close interest in the exact colour of the glass.

While Cole admits it’s one of the toughest projects he has worked on, he says it has also been the most satisfying, creating opportunities to explore ideas and methods and refine notions about sustainable design and building practices.

“It’s as close as we have ever come to getting everything right, because we were pushed by the client, to be honest,” he says. “We had the time and we were allowed to do the research to get it to this point. Even if it cost more, even if there was a supply issue, we were able to provide the client with an informed choice.”

While the house looks and feels like an extension of the environment as it transitions from bushland to sand and surf, it’s every inch a luxurious environment. Perhaps because of the owner’s tech background, the house has been fully automated, from thumbprint entry and touch free lighting to thermal monitors and sensors to control plant watering. Other aspects are decidedly low tech and old school, like carefully placed louvred windows to manage sea breezes and the built-in thermal mass that naturally regulates heating and cooling. Additional temperature control is via a hydronic system embedded in the slab using heat pump technology.

Cole says, with the right approach, it is possible to create a home that is both sustainable and luxurious.

“There’s not many clients who can put luxury and sustainability together,” he says. “Most people think it’s either/or. The architectural industry itself has historically promoted big expensive houses where sustainability is absolutely unimportant. That’s what they think luxury is — and it’s not luxury.”

Clean Air: The Next Luxury Apartment Perk

Technology that seamlessly fixes air quality will become widespread in homes by 2030, real-estate developers say. Will homebuyers care once the pandemic subsides?

An extraordinary house on Sydney’s Northern Beaches is redefining the meaning of luxury