For the last year and a half, Ken Ward and Andrée Zaleska have been rehabbing a 100-year-old former neighborhood store in the Boston neighborhood of Jamaica Plain. They’re converting it into a home for their combined family, a community gathering place, and a zero-carbon demonstration home to inspire others — and sharing their journey in the special series Coming Home: Chronicling the (re)invention of the JP Green House.
The firm overseeing the project, Placetailor, specializes in creating homes on the Passive House model, in which supertight insulation and careful use of passive solar create a building that requires no heating source. The JP Green House will be one of the first Passive House rehabs in the U.S. Photographer Leise Jones has documented the work as it progresses.

In which we chronicle the creation of a groundbreaking eco-home
Getting to know the neighborhood — through its trash
Fourth of July musings on symbols, patriotism, and identity
You and me and a billion tiny spores
Treasure hunting during building demo
Love in a time of cataclysm
The amazing promise and many challenges of passivhaus construction
Should Kuba have a puppy?
Puppies and bunnies and carnivorous eco-curmudgeons
The fight to save childhood
Therapy on the Titanic
The best part about climate change
Eve of Destruction (New Millennium)
Simple people
Reinventing the JP Green House
Home Economics of the JP Green House, Part 1