From the Construct Ireland archives

Completed in December 2009, Graham Group’s new headquarters reveal the construction and asset management company’s commitment to green building. The project’s sustainability adviser, Chris Croly of BDP describes an innovative design that pushes the boundaries of natural ventilation and takes a thoughtful approach to materials and buildings services to ensure a minimal environmental impact.

Lenny Antonelli visited a recently refurbished complex of social housing flats in Galway city that has combined excellence in urban regeneration with energy efficiency and major strides towards sustainability

Lime-hemp is developing as a bio composite construction material with serious ecological and energy advantages. Patrick Daly, lecturer in Environmental Design at DIT Bolton St. asks if this is the environmental material of the future and explores its mainstreaming potential.

Public private partnership schemes have come to dominate many aspects of Irish infrastructural development, from toll roads to urban regeneration schemes. Jason Walsh asks if they amount to privatisation by stealth and whether they come at too high a social and environmental cost.

Jason Walsh spoke to David Smith of O'Mahony Pike Architects about the practice's uniquely-designed show apartments for this year's Myhome.ie Spring House and Garden exhibition.

In this adapted extract from his new book Natural Building: A Guide to Materials and Techniques, seminal eco architect Professor Tom Woolley outlines some of the reasons why natural building is necessary.

In many ways local authorities have become some of Ireland’s most progressive developers. Jason Walsh visited Ardee, County Louth to look at the latest in a long line of new civic offices that are redefining local government in sustainable terms.

With an economy fuelled by a government approach to planning that many people equate to a road building and house building free for all, it should come as no surprise that quality of life suffers

In line with a growing consumer demand, the availability of green products is constantly increasing, leading to a situation where product quality need not be compromised in a search for a more eco friendly interior, as Jill Phillips of zero4zero7 interior design explains.