Andrew Michler redefines sustainable design through hyperlocal, compassionate architecture shaped by climate, culture, and the evolving lives of its occupants.
This article is part of our The Hyperlocal series, a continuation of the ideas explored in Southwest Contemporary Vol. 11.
In the midst of a deepening global climate crisis with increasing rates of natural disasters, “hyperlocalization of architecture” and “passive design” are terms that might not immediately spring to mind. But, perhaps counterintuitively, a hyperlocal, hyperefficient approach to architecture may be the best defense against these global threats.
Fundamentally these methods ensure that the architectural structure is rooted in the specificity of its environment, built to last, and designed with care—all as a means to combat climate instability, social fragmentation, and energy crises. Andrew Michler, a Certified Passive House Designer and advocate for sustainable building, takes this idea even further. His work shows that true sustainability is also an act of compassion—a sixth sense of design where the home takes on the role of caretaker for its occupants.
Michler’s work shows that true sustainability is also an act of compassion.
Michler is the principal of Hyperlocal Workshop, a design firm founded in 1993 and operating out of Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Masonville, Colorado. Hyperlocal Workshop and the Egyptian architecture firm HandOver Projects are currently exhibiting their collaborative project H_arbor Refugee Housing in the European Cultural Centre’s Time Space Existence exhibition during the 2025 Biennale Architettura in Venice, Italy, with a design concept that models hyperlocal ideas in site-specific housing for refugees.
In addition to his architectural work, Michler edited the book Hyperlocalization of Architecture: Contemporary Sustainable Archetypes in 2015, exploring the aesthetic values and working philosophies of a globally diverse group of designers. It includes figures such as Sampei Junichi, a Japanese architect known for creating compact, deeply contextual homes often under eighty square meters; and Edward Mazria, a Santa Fe–based architect who founded Architecture 2030, an organization with a mission to transform the built environment from “major emitter… to central solution” in the climate crisis. Through this editorial work, Michler has helped broaden the discourse on what it means to build sustainably and locally across different cultural landscapes.
Michler is known for building the first certified Passive House in Colorado, but before that, at age twenty-one, Michler rebuilt his family’s home after it was destroyed in the 1991 Oakland Hills Firestorm—a formative experience that shaped his approach to architecture and resilience. “When people rebuild after a disaster they are put under significant stress, and they are not rebuilding what they lost, but are building their dream home,” he says of the experience. That rebuilt house, where his father lived for the next thirty-four years until his recent passing, still stands as a quiet testament to the power of resilient design, offering Michler and his sister a reclamation of memory, identity, and permanence.
This early encounter with catastrophe—and the opportunity to build a home alongside his father—gave Michler an understanding of how design can shape emotional recovery, not just structural outcomes. That sensibility now runs through all his design projects. “I witnessed how my father went through stages of rebuilding not just a home but his life,” he says. The 1991 remodel “was a crystallization of my relationship as an adult with my dad and marked a fundamental change in how we related.” He adds, “the thing about building as a healing process, it teaches you how to relate with someone else when working on something together.”
Hyperlocal design means tuning every aspect of a building to its exact site—climate, geography, ecology, and culture.
Hyperlocal design means tuning every aspect of a building to its exact site—climate, geography, ecology, and culture. It rejects generic solutions and prioritizes responsiveness: to the land, community, and construction realities that meld efficient living juxtaposed with the idea of belonging, not just fitting in.
Globalized architecture often imposes form over context, resulting in structures that may look modern but perform poorly. Michler says, “Passive House [design] is a process that focuses on how the building operates in its environment, and by extension hyperlocal buildings are durable, efficient, and human-scaled.”
Michler’s off-grid Passive House in Masonville, Colorado, is a prime example. Built at 8,000 feet above sea level in a harsh mountain climate, it achieves thermal comfort year-round with no active heating system. For Michler, comfort goes beyond ergonomics—it’s about creating a home that truly takes care of its occupants. “It is really about maximizing and optimizing how a building feels, and its raw performance—how it uses energy.”
At the core of Michler’s process is asking his clients one deceptively simple question: “What does your day look like?” From there, he unpacks their value systems, lifeways, and emotional needs. The answers to this question shape how design will interface with the client’s routines—not just now, but as they grow and evolve within their space. In this way, design for Michler is “a bridge for the ongoing relationship between human development and built form.”
Michler distills his design philosophy into five interlocking principles: The first is environmentalism, meaning the design must be in dialogue with the politics of place, climate, and ecology. With invention, he embraces design solutions that often challenge convention or standard practice. (Here he admits that, “Invention can be tricky in that cost and lack of willingness on the part of contractors to try new technology can see a reduction in the level of inventiveness a project can absorb.”) User experience dictates that every space must anticipate how people will move, live, rest, and change within it. With sympathy—a concept he acquired from his extensive study of Spanish and Japanese building traditions—the design’s environment exhibits care and emotional sensitivity to the occupant. And finally, time, in that a well-built space must endure long after its inhabitants are gone.
Together, these principles form Michler’s design ethos for precision that is flexible and efficiency that is generous. It’s an approach that rejects spectacle in favor of quiet longevity. “I would build an ‘ugly’ house if it met all my design principles,” he says.
Michler’s personal connection to fire recovery came full circle in 2020, when Colorado’s largest wildfire to date—the Cameron Peak Fire—devastated the region. Shortly thereafter he took on commissions to help restore communities, understanding better than most the trauma and potential of starting over. “I have learned from these experiences that the rebuilding process is not about building back but building forward as an active process,” he says, understanding that people were not rebuilding a lost home in an effort to recreate their past, they were in fact reshaping their lives beyond the restoration of an architectural structure.
Michler concedes that Passive House design doesn’t encompass his entire design philosophy, but is best conceived as a responsive toolkit. “I am not just designing from my own mind; there are techniques that others have used that I am also pulling from,” he notes. This synergy among designers becomes an increasing set of tested and refined skills shared from amongst a host of other designers that are not aiming to perfect a singular design model and instead are seeking new ways to ask and answer better questions, one location at a time.
From this context hyperlocalism is able to escape the reductive frame of carbon footprint mitigation, and rather becomes a blueprint for what comes next: a world where the built environment cares and evolves in a lasting formation of compassion for its occupants.
