Our Name

Newphire Building is a progressive, high performance home builder based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.  We are one of only a handful of Certified Passive House Builders in the state of North Carolina.

The inspiration for the name  "Newphire" came from reading the book, Revinventing Fire, by Amory Lovins and the Rocky Mountain Institute.  To paraphrase Mr. Lovins, a visionary in the field of energy efficiency and energy independence, the crux of the argument is this:

Burning fossil fuels has benefited mankind greatly in the past  - we have harnessed their power to build great cities and societies.  Today, however, the negatives of heavy fossil fuel usage far outweigh the positives, and it is time for a new fire.

“The new fire described here combines two elements: it uses energy very efficiently, and it gets the energy from diverse and mainly dispersed renewable sources.”

That explains most of our name...but there's still a bit of a mystery...why  the 'ph' in the middle, instead of  an 'f'?

The 'ph' is a reference to our favorite performance-based building standard, Passive House. Taking Lovins' concept of a new fire, and combining it with a nod to Passive House gives us Newphire. It's a name we feel is both meaningful and inspired, just like the homes we build.