Welcome to the archive of Construct Ireland, the award-winning Irish green building magazine which spawned Passive House Plus.
The feature articles in these archives span from 2003 to 2011, including case studies on hundreds of Irish sustainable buildings and dozens of investigative pieces on everything from green design and building methods, to the economic arguments for low energy construction.
While these articles appeared in an Irish publication, the vast majority of the content is relevant to our new audience in the UK and further afield. That said, readers from some regions should take care when reading some of the design advice - lots of south facing glazing in New Zealand may not be the wisest choice, for instance.
Dip in, and enjoy!
Located in Oldtown, a hard to find country town in County Dublin, is a stunning new one-off house that not only manages to bring open-plan living to rural life, but also meets the onerous passive house standards using low impact materials. Jason Walsh visited the site as the house neared completion to find out more, an opportunity that Construct Ireland couldn’t pass up
Archie O’Donnell, projects coordinator for Éasca and the Irish Passive House Association
Richard Douthwaite explains how inadequate conventional energy generation is and reveals the potential that combined heat and power & energy service companies can offer.
Intended as a landmark not only architecturally, Áras Chill Dara sets an example for large scale sustainable building, as Construct Ireland’s Jason Walsh found out.
If one was to draw a conclusion on how seriously sustainability is being taken at government level using the number of occurrences of the word "sustainable" in policy documents, housing guidelines and speeches from Ministers, it would come across that Ireland's on a sound sustainable footing.
Ireland has been waiting for a green procurement plan in the public sector for two years. Jason Walsh looks at what the plan should include and why it is needed, now more than ever, and with sustainable building at its core.
In the future, the high cost and scarcity of fossil energy may force a shift towards retaining and modernising old buildings, thereby avoiding the use of huge amounts of energy to manufacture building materials. John Hearne visited the Belvedere Orphanage, a group of 19th century dwellings whose low energy refurbishment may offer a template for development in the future, by using wood pellet district heating and a host of energy saving measures whilst nonetheless paying great attention to preserving the buildings’ heritage value.
Construct Ireland’s John Hearne discovers a low energy, low carbon house being built in Galway which is achieving sustainable results whilst not jarring with aesthetic conventions.
Sustainable Dundalk housing project designed to prolong the independence of older residents