The Welsh government has issued a new standard for social housing that requires an embodied carbon assessment, favours timber-based offsite construction, and bans fossil fuel boilers.
Most people think of cold, cramped and poor-quality buildings when they think of student accommodation, but two new passive house residences at King’s College, Cambridge are rewriting the rulebook, with their focus on occupant comfort, architectural quality, and an enlightened, long-term view of construction costs.
An intriguing new passive house in Dundee takes the traditional ‘box’ form associated with the standard and turns it on its head, using a series of pitched roofs and different claddings to make it feel more like a traditional city terrace than a single dwelling – built with a heavy emphasis on carbon sequestering materials.
Sometimes it takes the constraints of a challenging site to bring out the best possible design, and that was certainly the case for this Limerick City passive house, where the project team managed to deliver a unique, curving passive house in response to a tricky urban plot.
This all-wood passive-certified home in the village of Kippen was built directly by its architect owners, who not only achieved the passive house standard but did so with an ecological approach that sought to use building materials ultra-efficiently and make it easy to deconstruct and recycle the building at the end of its life.
Leading offsite timber construction specialist Lidan Designs recently completed a number of modular, low embodied carbon, nearly zero energy buildings (NZEBs) for public authorities.
Modular timber frame manufacturer Lidan Designs has won the Future Focus Award at the 2021 National Enterprise Awards.
Sited on the side of a hill in the west of Ireland, a new home that meets the NZEB and passive house standards boasts a locally-made and super-insulated timber-frame, and is designed to fold cleverly into the rural landscape.
When Welsh sustainable building specialists PYC decided to start making their own timber frames, they got down to work designing and building their own factory. Once that was finished, it was time to test their system on their first order: to build their own passive house certified offices right next door – and to be bold enough to decide not to install central heating.
Flat-pack furniture has become a fixture of modern living, but what happens when the same concept is applied to housing – and when the client is an architect seeking to build to passive house and nearly zero energy building levels?
For new self-builders Andrew and Lynne Webster, spending extra time and money on the design stage of their new passive grade timber frame house proved to be one of the best decisions they could have made.
This issue features a low energy community centre in a mountainous region of Austria.
The best architecture responds skilfully and sensitively to its surroundings, so when a long and narrow plot beside a busy road became available in the Somerset village of Chew Magna, architect David Hayhow set out to design a passive house, inspired by nearby farm buildings, that would be both private yet filled with light — quite the challenge given the site’s tight restraints.
Designed in a traditional farmhouse cluster on a greenfield site amid the hedgerows of rural Cork, this new passive home by the River Sullane pays deep attention not only to energy efficiency but also to natural light, elegant design and preserving the ecology of its sensitive setting.
Fuelled by the need to build quickly and to increasingly tight sustainability standards, the market for timber frame and mass timber construction is growing rapidly. This detailed guide covers many of the main established and emerging techniques, and looks at key issues to address if you’re considering a timber-based build.
Hiding in woodland in an area of outstanding natural beauty, the Fishleys passive house manages to be both strikingly contemporary yet deeply sensitive to its rural setting. It also boasts a masterfully crafted timber frame structure with one of the best airtightness results this magazine has ever published.
The Deerings, a large new certified passive house in the Hertfordshire village of Harpenden, is the stunning result of meticulous attention to design, energy efficiency and ecological materials by its architects, builders and a homeowner so taken by the experience that it led to an investment in an innovative passive house start-up.
Choosing newly-harvested green oak — which shrinks and moves as it dries — for the millimetre-precise demands of passive house construction was a bold move by Phil Garnett and his wife Yvonne, but one that ultimately gave them one of the most unique and ground-breaking passive homes in the UK.
This skilfully designed new passive house in Blackrock manages to be lightfilled and strikingly contemporary while taking its design inspiration from the very ordinary Dublin street on which it sits.
Leading low energy timber frame manufacturer MBC Timber Frame Ltd has completed work on another project aiming for the passive house standard.
This unique sports and drama hall, inspired by the architecture of local buildings, was built to a new standard that aims to ensure buildings deliver all round health and comfort to their users.
With low electricity and gas bills and a feed-in tariff from its solar photovoltaic array, this simple, ecological timber frame passive house near the Welsh border manages to make about a £50 profit on annual energy costs.
This cellulose-filled timber frame house in the Suffolk countryside combines a rustic timber aesthetic with a simple contemporary form to rest lightly on the land.
A sensitive development of social housing in Lambeth combines three new passive houses with six low energy flats delicately constructed inside an old Victorian terrace — and with the emphasis on good indoor air quality, residents are already reporting improvements in health & well-being since moving from their old accommodation.
With an intricate design based on the concept of two pitched-roof sections that overlap, this eye-catching timberframed Sussex home proves you can meet the passive house standard with just about any shape.
Built with a timber frame insulated with straw-bale, and featuring an extensive suite of ecological and recycled materials, this stunning North Yorkshire home also produces more energy than it consumes, making it the first straw-bale building in the world to reach the brand new ‘passive house plus’ standard.
Designed around an existing timber chalet, this striking contemporary house managed to go passive on a budget for one lucky family of six, all while inadvertently blitzing Ireland’s forthcoming nearly zero energy building standard.