From the Construct Ireland archives

Upgrading and extending a semi-detached house on a tight site in Limerick required ingenuity from architect Patti O’Neill.

Located in Oldtown, a hard to find country town in County Dublin, is a stunning new one-off house that not only manages to bring open-plan living to rural life, but also meets the onerous passive house standards using low impact materials. Jason Walsh visited the site as the house neared completion to find out more, an opportunity that Construct Ireland couldn’t pass up

Achieving building regulations compliance and a good energy rating is one thing. Delivering a genuinely low energy building is quite another. A new scheme by one of Ireland’s most decorated developers may help show the market a way forward.

Ireland's largest passive house development to date, Shanganagh Castle, is proof that with proper planning and collaboration, delivering high density housing doesn’t mean compromising on quality or climate action – without increasing costs or causing delays.

Just outside the quiet rural town of Templepatrick, County Antrim, located ten miles north of Belfast, is a timber frame house that sets new standards for comfort and, the owners hope, sustainability. Jason Walsh visited the house and found a traditional aesthetic that belies its ultra modern sustainability features

As long term readers of Construct Ireland will recall, the mainstreaming in recent years of sustainable design and construction has been exemplified in many innovative local authority offices. John Hearne visited Aras Contae an Chláir, and discovered a building which attempts to holistically minimise environmental impact, with attention paid to more than just energy performance and carbon emissions.

Ramon Arratia, sustainability director for InterfaceFLOR in Europe, Middle East, Africa & India

The market for new residential build may have bottomed out, but compared to the rest of the construction industry the sustainable building sector appears buoyant. Changing market conditions, various government incentives and updated building regulations are all helping greener building companies - but with few houses likely to be built this year and capital restricted, challenges still lie ahead. Lenny Antonelli reports

RICHARD DOUTHWAITE proposes measures including energy upgrade of the housing stock  which could help to avoid economic meltdown, and JAY STUART outlines some energy saving measures which could be rolled out.

A little foresight at the design stage can go a long way in determining a building’s success. If a building’s design fails to take into consideration the needs of any potential occupants and users, the risk of the need for corrective work, often at considerable cost, is greatly increased.
Construct Ireland’s Architecture Correspondent Lauren Kapusta reports