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!
A new development in County Westmeath answers a nagging question about district heating: how to make it financially viable when it services energy efficient buildings. Lenny Antonelli visited a housing estate that combines low energy design with an innovative district heating system and ecological timber frame construction
Box-like, small windows, primary colour renders - there is a common misconception that building to the passive house standard involves sacrificing design freedom for the sake of thermal performance. Not so, argues passive house guru Tomás O’Leary of MosArt and the Irish Passive House Academy, as his selection of architecturally diverse buildings reveals.
Richard Douthwaite proposes a new bank-free, debt-free way of financing property purchase and development to get the market working again and clear up the mess left by the bubble.
Designing sustainable buildings doesn’t always mean hi-tech solutions. From green roofs to living walls to constructed wetlands, sometimes it’s just a matter of embracing natural solutions. Lenny Antonelli investigates the emerging technologies and designs that use nature to improve the performance of buildings.
Invest NI has itself invested in a new headquarters in central Belfast that it hopes will be seen as a model for sustainable development, as Richard Linger, Sustainability Director, White Young Green Ireland explains.
External insulation examined: the reasons why placing insulation outside makes most sense, with six example projects
Ernst Posthuma of Solarcon sheds light on a demonstration project in west Cork that combines passive and active solar gains to remarkable effect.
Four years ago the construction industry was focused on building big and fast — but at the same time, a small team was carefully and ecologically retrofitting a terraced Dublin house on a tight budget according to passive house principles.
With money leaving local economies across Ireland to service debt and significant drops in local authority revenues, towns such as Dundalk, Ennis and Kilkenny are investigating the possibility of bringing in electronic currencies to keep money circulating locally, as Richard Douthwaite reveals.
Landowners & Cement Producers Gain, Homebuyers & Taxpayers Suffer. By Richard Douthwaite