Jungle Road Home Architect Recognized

Architect Daniel Kahan received the Elizabeth L. and John H. Schuler Award from the Preservation Foundation of Palm Beach at a luncheon ceremony on Wednesday for a recently completed modern-style house he designed on Jungle Road, as first reported by the Palm Beach Daily News.

Although the home’s design was noteworthy in many ways, the house’s creative and environmentally friendly roof was the most impressive part of the new structure and earned Kahan the award.

The foundation also recognized Kahan’s clients, Jim Held and Kenn Karakul, for providing the vision for their residence at 241 Jungle Road in the Estate Section.

“We sought to study and implement the latest technologies and advancements in solar power, in combination with the idea of roof gardens, in a way that would be not only efficient and functional but beautifully composed,” Kahan, a partner with Smith and Moore Architects, said during his presentation.

The idea for the house was, Kahan said, to create “a modern house with a spirit that would not only find itself at home in the heart of the Estate Section — arguably Palm Beach’s greatest neighborhood — but also would embrace and combine the ideals of sustainability and beauty in a way that had not been previously achieved in Palm Beach.”

Jungle Road Home Architect Recognized

The roof features strips of grass surrounding solar panels, helping the house achieve energy sustainability. Kahan said that the idea was to conserve energy while reducing reflected heat. Neither the grass nor the solar panels can be seen from the ground. 

With state-of-the-art insulation, LED lighting, and an energy-efficient air-conditioning system, the house is a model of sustainability, said Held. He added that the amount of electricity produced and expended depends on the season of the year.

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“During the day, we generate all the energy we use,” Held said. “We’re not quite there at night.”

Any excess energy during the daytime is returned to region’s electrical grid, he said.