Timothy J. Kohut

Timothy Kohut, AIA, is Director of Sustainable Design for National Community Renaissance, a regional Developer/Builder of affordable housing. In his role, he focuses on high performance sustainability and zero net energy. Within National Community Renaissance he works with the Construction team and subcontractors to understand and implement strategies aimed at high performance and energy efficiency. He is a Certified Energy Analyst (CEA), Home Energy Rating System (HERS) Rater, and Building Performance Institute (BPI) Certified Energy Analyst.

Kohut combines his architectural, energy modeling, diagnostic skills, and knowledge of construction to identify pathways for increasing energy efficiency without driving up costs. He has spent more than 20 years designing, building, and consulting on affordable housing projects throughout Southern California, and he has been involved in the design and construction of more than 1,500 units of high performance multi-family housing. He was coordinating architect for the first affordable housing project in Southern California to install a photovoltaic system (Hart Village, 2003) Principal Architect for the first multi-family housing project to to achieve LEED for Homes Platinum level certification in Southern California (Casa Dominguez, 2009), the first commercial scale project to include a gray water irrigation system in Los Angeles County (Casa Dominguez, 2009), and the first project in Southern California to install a gray water system for indoor water reuse (Cedar Springs, 2016). His research has focused on thermal comfort in multi-family housing, and he has designed projects that use passive ventilation and night flushing instead of refrigerated air conditioning. He was the primary sustainability consultant for two affordable, multiple multi-family housing projects pursuing Living Building Challenge certification (Cedar Springs, 2016 and Silver Star Apartments, 2017), which are Zero-Net (or Near Zero) Energy, Zero Net Carbon buildings.

Additionally, Kohut is a Certified Access Specialist (CASp), and helped craft the Los Angeles Community Development Commission’s Universal Design Standards (used in all affordable housing projects), and the California Tax Credit Allocation Committee’s “Enhanced Accessibility Standards”. He has presented locally and nationally on issues of energy efficiency and accessibility.