Phius Building Certification Associate Alyssa Fink discusses the first-ever Phius Foundations Live! event that took place May 29, 2026, in Tucson, Arizona.
Phius staff recently traveled to sunny Tucson, Arizona to host a first-of-its-kind training event: “Phius Foundations Live! Passive Building in the Southwest.” The program was designed to support the growth of the local passive building community by offering an accessible and engaging introduction to Phius and the concepts of passive building, tailored to southern Arizona’s hot-dry climate and local industry conditions.
The day-long training event was convened in a classroom on the University of Arizona campus, and attendees came from a wide range of professional backgrounds, including architects, engineers, builders, HVAC professionals, and more.
The training content was designed as a high-level introduction to each of the topics covered in the Passive Building Foundations course. This includes building science, passive building concepts, Phius standards and Certification, the business case for passive building, and passive building policy. We also took a closer look at some real-world examples of Phius projects.
Interspersed with the training content were a number of interactive activities designed to help attendees reflect on what they were learning, envision how they could apply it to their own work, and build connections with their fellow attendees.
The in-person nature of Phius Foundations Live! provided a unique opportunity for those new to the passive building community to build a deeper understanding of the material by asking questions that pertained to their own work and their own experience. At many points throughout the day, attendees asked insightful questions that sparked lengthy discussions with Phius staff members and amongst attendees with different professional backgrounds, enabling them to approach the question from a different perspective.
At one point, we put away the projector screen and took out the whiteboard markers to collectively workshop how passive building principles could be applied to one attendee’s current project. Many attendees were excited to jump into the conversation and work to apply the material that they had learned earlier in the day.
That story demonstrates just how important these in-person, interactive training events can be for introducing new people to the world of passive building. By working through the training material together, in the same classroom environment, attendees developed a sense of connection with one another and the broader passive building community. By interacting personally with Phius staff to workshop real-world project ideas, attendees were able to build an understanding of the training material as highly practical and applicable in many different contexts.
On a personal level, working with other Phius staff to make Phius Foundations Live! a reality was a full-circle experience for me. While I officially joined Phius as a Building Certification Associate in January, my journey with passive building began at the University of Arizona several years ago, where I received my Phius Certified Consultant (CPHC®) training through a university-based course while pursuing my Bachelor of Architecture. I still remember how empowering it felt to build my passive building toolkit, and how excited I was to apply my knowledge to my former work in architectural practice.
I’m also a third-generation Arizonan, so the unique joys and challenges of designing, constructing, and inhabiting buildings in the hot-dry Southwest climate are quite familiar to me.
It was such an honor to return to the University of Arizona campus, where I was first introduced to passive building, and introduce folks from my local community of building professionals to the same ideas that deeply inspired me by setting forth a clear, science-based path to buildings that are healthier for people and the planet.
Looking ahead, I’m excited to welcome more of the Phius team and the broader passive building community back to Arizona later this year for PhiusCon 2026. We’re building some much-needed momentum for passive building here in the Southwest, and I know that this first Phius Foundations Live! event has played an important role in that progress.
Stay tuned for where Phius Foundations Live! will travel next!
