The pioneering passive house retrofit of a derelict farm building to create a visitor and education centre at Yorkshire Wildlife Trust's Stirley Community Farm, Huddersfield, is nearing completion and will be open to the public on Sunday, 1 September 2013 from 11am to 3pm.

Tall buildings tend to be among the worst offenders in terms of energy and environmental profligacy – but one new Viennese project shows that high rise doesn’t have to mean high environmental impact.

The winners of the 2013 UK Passivhaus Awards were announced last Thursday at a ceremony at the residence of the Austrian Ambassador in London.

Following on from my post on a two-week trip to Germany to study low energy building under the Phase Programme, I sent some questions to Torsten Windmueller, a timber engineer at Kompetenz Zentrum Holzbau & Ausbau, a centre of excellence for timber frame construction, to gauge his thoughts on the differences between building standards in Germany and Ireland.

Zephair have announced the launched of the Zephair Pre-Pro, an "easy to use and reliable way to perform quality control of your air tight layer by under pressurising a building".

Gloucestershire based Seymour-Smith architects are about to apply for planning permission for a bold new dwelling in the Buckinghamshire countryside that the firm says will go beyond the passive house standard in terms of energy efficiency. The project has already won the support of a Design Review Panel, which independently review the design of signficiant building projects. 

Check out this video from Saint Gobain on their technical academy in Kingscourt, Co Cavan. The academy showcases the company's products and provides training in their application. The company said that video is designed to provide an insight into the kind of courses that are available — most of which are free, and contain a mix of theory and hands-on training. Saint Gobain's brands included Isover, Gyproc and Weber.

It's not too hard to remember a time when 'passive house' was a rare, hallowed term. Of course it is still the zenith of low energy building. But there was a time only a few years ago, at our predecessor magazine Construct Ireland, when the possibility of featuring a certified passive house only came along every couple of issues.

To coincide with the publication of our third issue, we're delighted to announce the launch of an exciting new feature for subscribers to the magazine.

My blog post last week on 'passive house vs passivhaus' generated a fair bit of debate, so I thought it'd be nice to take a look at some of the reaction it provoked. The vast majority of those who responded disagreed with my stance, and this magazine's stance, expressing preference for the German 'passivhaus'.