BrightBuilt Home Press & Media Coverage

BrightBuilt Home serves as a case study in "How energy modeling can set you up for success," demonstrating how advanced software and building science create high-performance homes. This Building Science: 101 article, authored by BrightBuilt Home Managing Principal, Parlin Meyer showcases how energy modeling guides design choices to optimize aesthetics, performance, and cost.

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Featured in Dwell's "Budget Breakdown" series, a $1.1M BrightBuilt Home prefab in St. George, Maine helped a client start fresh. The Little Diamond model provided the cozy, energy-efficient hideaway she envisioned.

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BrightBuilt Home's kitchens demonstrate the evolution toward healthier appliances by using induction cooktops and energy-efficient appliances that improve air quality while reducing energy consumption.

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BrightBuilt Home exemplifies sensible swaps for high-performance through building science principles that create energy-smart and stylish homes, such as incorporating practical approaches to air sealing, insulation, and energy efficiency.

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Solar arrays and superior insulation enable net-zero living in cold climates through these innovative prefab residences. Born from the acclaimed BrightBuilt Barn, BrightBuilt Home now offers 20 different models designed to disrupt residential construction with climate-responsible, high-performance homes.

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High-performance homes require careful consideration when adding fireplaces due to tightly sealed building envelopes. BrightBuilt Home demonstrates how electric stoves combine ambience, efficiency, and safety while offering sustainable alternatives to traditional fireplaces without compromising air quality.

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Simple structural design unlocks the potential of sustainable living through BrightBuilt Home's approach to minimizing environmental impact. Custom designs demonstrate how keeping structures simple reduces air leakage, conserves materials, and optimizes surface-area-to-volume ratios for maximum energy efficiency.

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Simple structural design unlocks the potential of sustainable living through BrightBuilt Home's approach to minimizing environmental impact. Custom designs demonstrate how keeping structures simple reduces air leakage, conserves materials, and optimizes surface-area-to-volume ratios for maximum energy efficiency.

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Sustainable, stylish homes showcase Maine's move toward tighter, cleaner, self-sustaining houses. One couple chose a semi-custom approach, expanding BrightBuilt Home's farmhouse-esque Cushing model with 11-inch-thick cellulose-insulated walls, triple-glazed windows, and net-zero capability while saving thousands in design fees.

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High-performance prefab small homes showcase how ADUs meet Maine's growing need for sustainable housing. Four BrightBuilt Home designs—Torrey, Highland, Sterling and Jordan—demonstrate net-zero performance with double-stud walls, cellulose insulation, and energy systems that produce as much as they consume.

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Glenn Close teams up with HGTV's Property Brothers to surprise her friend Robin with a backyard makeover in Eliot, Maine. The Scott brothers partnered with Portland's BrightBuilt Home to build a nearly 500-square-foot Sterling model ADU that was delivered by crane as part of the Celebrity IOU episode.

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Understanding building science concepts ensures deck and porch safety and durability for extending living space outdoors. BrightBuilt Home designs demonstrate proper waterproofing, structural connections, and material selection that withstand Maine's harsh conditions while maximizing the use of three-season outdoor spaces.

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A couple transofrmed BrightBuilt Home's Sidekick model into a high-performance modular retreat in East Boothbay. Working with architectural designer Jessica Benner, they customized the 850-square-foot design with a shed roof and clerestory windows. They also placed the building in such a way that it integrated seamlessly with the nature around it, creating a zero-energy home that fit right in to the local landscape.

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The BrightBuilt Barn, designed by Kaplan Thompson Architects and built by USA-based Bensonwood, is demonstrating what the next generation of sustainable building practices could look like. The net-zero building is designed with future adaptations in mind, allowing the building to change over time, adapting to both use and the environment.

They started researching comfortable, energy-efficient homes and found BrightBuilt Home in Portland, Maine. Kaplan Thompson Architects launched the modular-home company in 2013. They created it "to address a growing desire in the marketplace for high-performance homes," says Parlin Meyer, director, and a Certified Passive House Consultant.

From the use of structural insulated panels to achieving net-zero energy capability, these New England firms are paving the way for energy-efficient prefab construction.

Cappelletti and Mottram are among a number of local pros putting their efforts into eco-conscious subdivisions, a trend that has taken off in California, where all new homes must be net-zero by 2020. Freeport’s Kelsey Brook encompasses 15 homes, including a few net-zero, modular ones by Portland’s BrightBuilt Home, that are required to meet one of several green-building standards.

ACCESSORY DWELLING UNITS, or ADUs, are coming back into fashion, and that’s a good thing for Maine. If you’re not familiar with the term, you might know them as in-law apartments, granny flats, carriage houses, basement or garage apartments. But the names don’t tell the story behind ADUs or all the benefits they offer.

Few people who embark on the adventure of building a new home have done so before. If you are venturing down this road, there are key things to know before the first shovels hit the ground. And a significant portion of this knowledge lies in the financing process.

Phil Kaplan and his firm, Kaplan Thompson Architects, introduced many Mainers (including myself) to the idea of combining pre-fabricated building components as an effective way to create super-efficient, net-zero energy structures (without going broke in the process) when they introduced the BrightBuilt Barn project in 2008.

Brightbuilt Home, based in Portland, has added an in-law flat/ guesthouse option to its offering of netzero energy homes. According to the company, the predesigned dwellings are made to benefit multigenerational households and short-term renters. The units, which can be moved to other sites after being installed, start at $135,000.

For three years, Marian and Alex Starkey lived in a 1916 foursquare in South Portland that was charming, but chilly. “We were paying over $500 a month to keep the temperature barely tolerable,” says Marian. She issued an ultimatum: “If we’re going to stick it out in Maine, I want to build a warm house.” After accepting an unsolicited offer on their SoPo place, they had only a few months to secure a plot and construct their new home. The prefab path was a no-brainer.

Prefab homes are not new, as Sears Roebuck taught us many years ago. They also are not new in Maine, which is and has been home to several modular home manufacturers for decades.

But while these homes may prove highly durable and energy efficient, they often were fitted out with inferior materials, particularly when it came to floor covering, siding, tile work, cabinetry and finishes. No longer.

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Accessory dwelling units aren’t just for your mother-in-law anymore.

Maine-based BrightBuilt Home is betting that changing demographic patterns will mean increased demand for small, energy-efficient dwellings that can be ready in less time than conventional site-built houses.

The clients chose BrightBuilt Home’s Little Diamond design because they felt that it captured the classic aesthetic of a New England Cape with a twist of modern spaces and finishes. Simultaneously unimposing but a little bit grand, the design strikes a balance between the old and new, melding coastal vernacular with innovative building ideas.

The home’s tight, double-thick wall construction, triple-glazed windows, and solar array set the standard for Kaplan Thompson’s BrightBuilt Home modular designs, and after six years it’s still a prime example of the benefits of a tight, well-insulated roof.

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In 2006, architects Phil Kaplan and Jesse Thompson began building their first high-performance structure, a 700-square-foot, net-zero-energy barn in Rockport. Interest in modest, affordable homes started growing after the 2008 global financial crisis, spurring Kaplan Thompson to launch a sister firm, BrightBuilt Home, in 2013. The Portland-based company now produces elegant modular houses for those wanting energy independence and uncomplicated construction...

A classic Maine aesthetic meets efficient construction techniques and net-zero energy consumption in this gracious home, available as a building package from BrightBuilt Home. The proposed 1,750-square-foot modular structure, slated for construction in Yarmouth’s new 35-acre Village Run neighborhood, offers an open floor plan, passive solar heating, solar water heating and electric systems, and energy-efficient

And, if you speak with a growing number of Maine home builders, designers and architects, that’s a good thing. Blame it on our high fuel costs, cold climate, old housing stock or increasing awareness about the correlation between energy consumption and climate change, the winds of change are a’blowing across our state. Slowly, but surely, Mainers seem to be starting to understand how their homes function and are taking steps to reduce how much energy (and money) they’ll need to stay comfortable throughout the year.

KAPLAN THOMPSON ARCHITECTS and BRIGHTBUILT HOME are moving from their offices at 424 Fore Street to the second floor of 102 Exchange Street. The new 4,000-square-foot space will include separate workspaces for both companies, separate materials libraries, multiple conference rooms, and shared spaces.

The first night the Schuit family spent in their new modular home on Peaks Island last February, their then 6-month-old daughter slept through the night for the first time. “Coincidence? Maybe,” said Kelli Schuit. “But it’s a very quiet house...

Falmouth Foreside has a kind of classic, buttoned-up beauty about it, but it also has water, which can infect people with lightheartedness—maybe even joy (at least in the summer) at their stroke of luck to be living so close to the ocean. Alex and Marian Starkey felt this way when they found property in Falmouth Foreside within their price range. On a street with houses of all sizes and neighbors of all ages, the young couple is finishing construction on a Kaplan Thompson–designed BrightBuilt net- zero-energy home. Although they aren’t boaters themselves, the Starkeys, along with many others in the Foreside, regularly take their dogs for walks at the Town Landing public beach, a skip and a jump from their new house.

Parlin Meyer, director of BrightBuilt Home, which specializes in pre-designed modular net-zero energy homes, said she receives as many as 20 inquiries a week from people interested in building net-zero energy homes. BrightBuilt Home is a subsidiary of Kaplan Thompson Architects in Portland...

KAPLAN THOMPSON ARCHITECTS recently celebrated the launch of BrightBuilt Home, a new collection of nine home designs that are affordable, energy efficient, and quick to construct. These high-performance homes come outfitted with solar panels on the roof, which can provide up to 100 percent of the energy needed for the household. As of July, nine homes have already been constructed, including five modularly constructed houses, and building had begun in states as far ranging as Virginia and Vermont.

A decade ago, architect designed prefab (preferably modern) was all the buzz, with Allison Arieff and Bryan Burkhart's book Prefab inspiring designers and the Dwell Home by Resolution 4 being seen everywhere...

Who they are: A line of designs by Kaplan Thompson Architects in collaboration with Keiser Homes—high-performance homes that reach a demographic who might not otherwise have access to net-zero-level performance in a new house.

Originally stick-built for real clients, this modular home merges middle-class affordability with net-zero status.

Net-zero modular homes designed by Kaplan Thompson Architects address housing affordability on Maine's Peaks Island while introducing energy-efficient construction. The three BrightBuilt models feature 12-inch cellulose-insulated double-stud walls and triple-glazed windows for superior performance.

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Keith Collins is the owner of the BrightBuilt Barn in Rockport, Maine, a super-insulated, highly weather-tight structure that is “net zero,” meaning it creates more energy than it uses and over time will, in fact, erase its own carbon footprint. Designed by Kaplan Thompson Architects, the barn was featured in MH+D almost two years ago. I checked in with Collins to see how it’s performing.

The Modular Zero Collection launches with a net-zero energy option, evolving from the acclaimed BrightBuilt Barn prototype. Kaplan Thompson Architects and Keiser Homes developed three models featuring R-60 roof assemblies, standing-seam metal roofs, and FSC-certified materials for durable, comfortable, affordable operation.

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The BrightBuilt Barn in Rockport, Maine recieved Architect Magazine's Grand Award for its innovative net-zero energy design, LEED-Platinum certification, and modular construction, all demostrating that sustainable building can be both beautiful and replicable.

This 700-square-food BrightBuilt Barn, complete with a bathroom and a kitchen, generates enough electricity to power itself as well as much of the nextdoor home in Rockport, Maine. Sierra Magazine featured this barn for its innovative LED light system that shows real-time energy flow and its impressive net-zero performance.

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The 2009 LEED for Homes Innovative Project Award from the U.S. Green Building Council was awarded to the BrightBuilt Barn for bringing to life "a vision of an evolved future forr the homebuilding industry" with its replicable, felxible prefabricated design that keeps costs low while achieving a net-zero performance.

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Featured as a NESEA project case study and winner of the NESEA Zero Net Energy Building Award 2010 runner-up, the BrightBuilt Barn is highlighted as a prototype for 21st-century sustainable housing with its award-winning, practical structure designed to make more clean energy than it consumes over its lifespan.

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The BrightBuilt Barn earned the LEED Platinum certification, an honor shared by only six other homes in New England. The 756-square-foot prototype demonstrates that net-zero energy performance can be achieved in cold climates, too.

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Mother Earth Living features the BrightBuilt Barn as "A Bright Idea," showcasing its ability to produce more energy than it consumes while achieving LEED Platinum certification, even amidst freezing Maine temperatures.

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Graphisoft's ArchiCAD software helped design the innovative net-zero BrightBuilt Barn in Rockport, Maine. A structure that produces more energy than it consumes without the need for a furnace in Maine's cold climate. The 3D BIM models enabled precise collaboration between architects and builders for this sustainable design prototype.

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Featured as "A Beacon of Green Design," the BrightBuilt Barn demonstrates how Maine sustainable builders created the most eco-conscious structure possible while making it beautiful and affordable. Maine Home + Design showcases how this net-zero building generates enough electricity to give back to the grid while serving as a prototype for future green constructions.

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The BrightBuilt Barn, located in Rockwood, Maine, is one of the super energy-efficient prefab designs of the year. A highly covetable structure, this barn/studio is not only a net-zero house — meaning it strives to leave no carbon footprint — it is also seeking LEED Platinum certification. While the current prototype was designed as a studio/workspace, the barn is constructed on 4-foot modules...

Featured for its innovative real-time energy feedback system that Phil Kaplan describes as "an update on the mood ring." The super-insulated, solar-heated BrightBarn uses LED lights that turn green when creating more energy than it sues, yellow for borderline, and red when owners should reduce consumption.

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