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!
Beauty is only skin deep, or so goes the cliché, but is there more to 'grace' in a building than its exterior? Jason Walsh visited Rathnew, County Wicklow, to see how an ordinary office building was being transformed into a paragon of sustainability and spoke to two of the building's designers and occupants, architect Tomás Ó Leary and engineer Mark O'Brien
The first scheme of renewable energy grants for Irish homeowners, the Greener Homes Scheme, was launched on Monday 27th March 2006 and will make grant funding available to homeowners looking to install renewable energy heating technology
In terms of 1972 money, oil prices averaged about six dollars a barrel between 1987 and 2000. Last October they reached $40. They are now around $50 a barrel which means that they are beginning to climb back into the territory which caused the global economy to crash in 1979/80.
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.
A new public park on the northside of Dublin combines wind power and sustainable water management with environmentally sound materials and strategies to boost biodiversity, making it a standard-bearer in urban design. Lenny Antonelli visited the site
While the principles of low energy building apply equally for new build and upgrades, the reality is that htting passive levels becomes much trickier when retrofitting. The Passive House Institute have taken this on board and created a retrofit standard that is ambitious but achievable.
Jeff Colley spoke to Commissioner Piebalgs about key issues affecting Ireland’s energy future and the importance of local initiatives such as Fingal County Council’s groundbreaking introduction of sustainable building requirements
Richard Douthwaite reveals that oil and gas peak are barely mentioned in the Government's recent energy Green Paper.
A new development at Grange Lough, Rosslare, reveals that passive houses can be made Irish – both in terms of what they’re built with, and how they look.
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.