From the Construct Ireland archives

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

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.

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In the hands of the right architect, meeting the passive house standard needn’t involve compromising on design. Construct Ireland visited a recently certified passive house which shows that a seamless low energy architecture is possible

Imagine moving into a house without a heating system – what would you do? Contact the developer and demand they put one in immediately? Call a solicitor and sue the builder? Or sit back and enjoy living in a house, designed to meet your expectations of comfort without any recourse to a space heating system. Jason Walsh met the people behind Ireland’s drive toward the passive house.

Interhabs, a company who build to the highly energy efficient Canadian Super E programme, have recently entered the Irish house building market.
Jeff Colley speaks to Ronan Long , General Manager of Interhabs Ireland, about the reasons why he believes Interhabs will bring energy efficient, comfortable, healthy homes to people across Ireland

Sustainable building at its best is about much more than just energy and carbon emissions, and involves considering location, form, orientation and the use of healthy, environmentally friendly materials. Mike Haslam of trail-blazing ecological architects Solearth describes a family home which scores highly on every front

The building is the first all timber office complex in Ireland. It covers almost 2,300m2 of floor space and provides accommodation for almost 100 staff working in a wide range of forestry related disciplines.

Since establishing UCD’s Energy Research Group in 1975, the career of Professor J Owen Lewis has taken in the role of principal at the UCD College of Engineering, Mathematical and Physical Sciences, a Bord na Móna R&D directorship and expert roles advising EU research, national energy policy and building regulations. Appointed CEO of SEAI last year, Professor Lewis has been a champion of sustainable building since before the term existed. His selection combines a proto-green Alvar Aalto design, the reimagined Reichstag and an unusual academic building with two new cutting edge sustainable buildings.

Randy Ralston and Mel Cronin aimed for the passive house standard with their upgrade, and though they didn’t quite get there they ended up with a house that produces more energy than it consumes, making it one of the country’s flagship green renovation projects.

Richard Douthwaite explores the best options available to solve the intermittency problem of wind energy and help Ireland to harness its famously abundant natural resources