Facing the challenge of how to bring a Victorian home with damp old brick walls up to a modern low energy standard, architect Brendan O’Connor deployed an innovative solution: build entirely new and super-insulated timber frame walls within the old structure.

Lark Rise is an elegant new passive house in rural Buckinghamshire designed by bere:architects, but it is more than ‘just’ a passive house. Because it produces and stores so much of its own energy through on-site solar power, it is a certified passive house ‘plus’, and over the following pages, its architect Justin Bere explains how dwellings like this can play a key role in decarbonising our economies and societies in the coming decades.

With a decade of experience designing primary schools to the passive house standard under their belt, Architype have now designed the UK’s fi rst passive secondary school — and all of the evidence suggests there is no better way to ensure a healthy, comfortable environment that is supremely conducive to learning.

A stunning new passive house in Cork breaks the conventions of passive house form with a design that manages to be both dramatic yet discreet at the same time, inspired by a US project to contort itself beautifully into its steeply sloping site.

This issue features a passive house ‘plus’ certifi ed three-storey offi ce building in Strasbourg, France.

cAward-winning passive house makes an elegant mark on the South Downs

Scottish passive house built with innovative local timber system.

This issue features an intriguing new passive house apartment building in north-west Spain.

Inspired design offers route to net zero energy living

Luxury zero-energy passive apartments rise on the Devon coast