Welcome to the archive of Construct Ireland, the award-winning Irish green building magazine which spawned Passive House Plus.
The feature articles in these archives span from 2003 to 2011, including case studies on hundreds of Irish sustainable buildings and dozens of investigative pieces on everything from green design and building methods, to the economic arguments for low energy construction.
While these articles appeared in an Irish publication, the vast majority of the content is relevant to our new audience in the UK and further afield. That said, readers from some regions should take care when reading some of the design advice - lots of south facing glazing in New Zealand may not be the wisest choice, for instance.
Dip in, and enjoy!
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.
Sustainable architect Simon McGuinness describes a project in Dublin which is set to surpass the onerous standard using structural insulated panels.
Jason Walsh visited the Green Building, a pioneering sustainable development built in Dublin's Temple Bar in 1994, to find out how one of Ireland’s most ground breaking eco designs has been performing over the last decade.
In this adapted extract from his new book Natural Building: A Guide to Materials and Techniques, seminal eco architect Professor Tom Woolley outlines some of the reasons why natural building is necessary.
A striking new house in County Cork proves that meeting the passive house standard needn’t mean sacrificing good design
Aine Mc Elhinney discovers that the threat radon poses to private water supply needs addressing to help prevent lung cancer deaths
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
The notion that curbing CO2 emissions would damage economic growth has been used as an excuse from developed countries such as the USA not to switch from fossil fuels to renewable energy. However, as Richard Douthwaite reveals, the people of Austrian town Güssing are discovering firsthand that this couldn’t be further from the truth.
