While I love great design and magnificent old houses, the conversation in the building world has shifted pretty dramatically to a focus on performance and sustainability. When you’re building from the ground up, you can incorporate the latest building science to create a home that performs fantastically out of the gate, minimizing energy usage while creating a very comfortable, enjoyable space in which to live.

The bulk of our population, though, doesn’t live in new homes. I’d argue that retrofitting existing buildings, affordably, and with an eye toward minimizing energy consumption, is just as important as building more new housing.

Our sister brand, Green Building Advisor, has started exploring the retrofit issue in depth in The Retrofit Podcast: Renovating Homes in the Era of Climate Change. Every two weeks, host Ryan Shanahan will chat with industry experts about ideas on how to make the houses we already have better. If you’re interested in improving existing homes, it’s a must-listen. There are some great guests coming up in future episodes, including Allison Bailes III, Dan Kolbert, and Rachel White.

As both a homeowner and a serial DIYer, discussion around assemblies in new homes implemented for building performance are interesting, but often what I really want to know is, “How do I make my house perform better?” That’s the question I had in mind when we started working on this podcast, and it’s a complex topic. Compared to remodeling and retrofitting, building new is easy.

—Andrew Zoellner, editorial director

This image originally appeared in Retrofits for Energy Performance and Design Impact.

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