Perhaps the most common argument against making passive house mainstream is that it costs too much to build. But as building regulations tighten and an increasingly competitive passive house sector emerges, does that argument hold water?
Turning an old Victorian home into a passive house is a painstaking job that would frighten many building professionals. But the team behind this innovative retrofit didn't just end up with a certified passive house, they got one of the lowest energy dwellings in the UK.
A recently completed pilot project by Cork Institute of Technology may be a model for bringing untenably inefficient and uncomfortable office buildings up to near zero energy performance levels.
Although preconceived notions about the existence of a passive house aesthetic still abound, trailblazing projects like the Ditchingham affordable housing scheme in Norfolk show that vernacular architecture & build methods can go hand-in-hand with passive performance.
Building a passive house school is a big achievement, but the team behind Oakmeadow Primary School in Wolverhampton have done something even more formidable — they built one when they weren't even asked to, and they did it for a conventional budget.
Built on a tricky site in the seaside town of Salthill, Co Galway, Ireland’s first semi-detached passive house development is designed to meet the needs of three generations from the same family.
A new timber frame house in Co Cork doesn't just meet the passive house standard, it does so for an impressive price.
Picking from some of the best current sustainable design the world has to offer, we profile a floating passive house currently moored in the Netherlands, a ground-breaking timber hybrid tower in Austria, a multi unit passive scheme in Malmö, and an Enerphit upgrade to a brutalist Connecticut home originally designed by one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s colleagues.
Predicted energy usage seldom reflect actual consumption, whether in the case of typical stock or notionally low energy buildings. But how well does passive house turn theory into reality?