Super E

Marie Stamp, Senior Trade Commissioner at the Canadian Embassy, Dublin, discusses the merits of Super E home build.
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!

Marie Stamp, Senior Trade Commissioner at the Canadian Embassy, Dublin, discusses the merits of Super E home build.

The government is aiming to energy upgrade one million buildings by 2020, but huge investment will be needed to reach that goal as finance expert Jack O’Keeffe of Larchmont Consulting explains


Chris Croly from BDP outlines the low energy and renewable energy strategies used in University College Cork’s new Environmental Research Institute, a test bed for the design and performance of sustainable buildings, which is ideally suited to housing the 200+ environmental projects carried out by its researchers.

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.


A new extension to the EPA's headquarters in Wexford lives up to the organisation's aim of environmental protection, boasting passive ventilation and lighting, a host of green technologies and a sustainable approach to landscaping.

Lenny Antonelli takes a look at some of the entrants of the 2009 Solar Decathlon, a competition that challenges university teams from around the world to design and build homes that capture the sun’s energy.

Closed-panel timber frame home in Wicklow with impressive thermal performance and airtightness

Mixing excellent thermal performance with renewable heating, efforts to boost biodiversity and plans for micro-generation, a new timber frame house in rural Cork shows that both appealing design and low environmental impact can be achieved with one-off rural housing.