From the Construct Ireland archives

Newly elected Green Party Ministers John Gormley & Eamon Ryan talk to Construct Ireland about their vision for a sustainable future.

The Carroll’s cigarette factory in Dundalk has been reborn as an avant garde exemplar of wind energy storage and an ingenious approach to integrated heating, ventilation and cooling, as sustainable design expert Chris Croly of BDP explains.

Independent integrated sustainable design consultant Xavier Dubuisson explains why heed must be paid to a recent study on the threats that misjudged energy upgrade work can pose to indoor air quality.

Kirk Shanks, Senior Researcher at the Sustainability Research Development Group, the Focas Institute, DIT describes the development of this new sustainable generation.

Designing a low-energy public building with passive ventilation and lighting in mind is one thing – making it fit seamlessly into a rural wetland environment is quite another. Lenny Antonelli visited the award-winning Ballybay Wetlands Centre in County Monaghan - a closed-panel timber frame structure designed to sit softly on the surrounding landscape.

With oil prices nearing record highs, forward thinking developers who’ve taken the initiative to incorporate green aspects into their projects are showing a buoyancy that starkly contradicts the downturn, as John Hearne reveals.

RICHARD DOUTHWAITE proposes measures including energy upgrade of the housing stock  which could help to avoid economic meltdown, and JAY STUART outlines some energy saving measures which could be rolled out.

The Daintree Building is a mixed-use, sustainable urban building on Pleasant’s Place, just off Camden St. Dublin , writes Brian O’Brien of Solearth Architects. Conceived in 1999 it has been a long development process—but by late September Daintree should be open for business and the ever innovative Daintree (Paper Co) Ltd will have a new home, one appropriate to the delightfulness of their products and their focus on nature’s generosity for their raw materials.

In this special feature, Construct Ireland draws from the views, hopes and concerns of four people ideally poised to comment on the implications this directive will have on how we design, construct, renovate, manage and think about buildings in Ireland.

External insulation examined: the reasons why placing insulation outside makes most sense, with six example projects