From the Construct Ireland archives

Invest NI has itself invested in a new headquarters in central Belfast that it hopes will be seen as a model for sustainable development, as Richard Linger, Sustainability Director, White Young Green Ireland explains.

Ireland has been waiting for a green procurement plan in the public sector for two years. Jason Walsh looks at what the plan should include and why it is needed, now more than ever, and with sustainable building at its core.

John Hearne explains how truly low energy buildings can succeed or fail depending on how they engage with their occupants.

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.

Green architect Minka McInerney profiles six unique green buildings including a cardboard school building, a globe-trotting recycled museum & the tallest timber building in the world

Inside the Lewis Glucksman Eco Gallery, with John Burgess of Arup Consulting

On 7 June 2011 environment minister Phil Hogan TD signed the latest changes to Part L of the building regulations into law, which will make it mandatory for all new homes to be 60% more energy efficient than the standards at the peak of the construction boom. Jeff Colley sheds some light on the key changes

The Dwelling Energy Assessment Procedure (DEAP) is now the national methodology for creation of Building Energy Rating (BER) Certificates for new dwellings in Ireland, and is an important desk top tool for predicting the performance of projects at outline design stage.

With money leaving local economies across Ireland to service debt and significant drops in local authority revenues, towns such as Dundalk, Ennis and Kilkenny are investigating the possibility of bringing in electronic currencies to keep money circulating locally, as Richard Douthwaite reveals.

The desire for better insulated, more environmentally friendly homes is driving ever more Irish self-builders to investigate alternatives to traditional block building. Jason Walsh visited a contemporary style factory-built timber frame house built in County Waterford in 2005.