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!
Ireland has been waiting for a green procurement plan in the public sector for two years. Jason Walsh looks at what the plan should include and why it is needed, now more than ever, and with sustainable building at its core.
Intended as a landmark not only architecturally, Áras Chill Dara sets an example for large scale sustainable building, as Construct Ireland’s Jason Walsh found out.
As we all know, Ireland is currently paying the price for the inability of its political and corporate leaders to take seriously the warning signs of an economy where property investment and borrowing generally got out of control. Looking at policy and commercial investment plans for energy supply and distribution, Richard Douthwaite asks, are the decision makers showing an alarmingly similar attitude to evident gas supply threats?
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.
Aine Mc Elhinney discovers that the threat radon poses to private water supply needs addressing to help prevent lung cancer deaths
Until recently the York Street flats had been a living legacy of failed past approaches to social housing – a slum of mainly north-facing flats dating from Victorian times, and poorly rebuilt in the year Ireland became a republic, 1949. John Hearne visited the recently redeveloped York Street and found a thoroughly sustainable set of buildings that should inspire thoughts of future progress rather than past failings.
SEAI recently proposed a series of changes to Deap — the software tool used to calculate BERs — including a reduction in its primary energy factor. But while this will benefit electrically-powered heating devices, some in the industry still feel systems such as heat pumps are disadvantaged by Deap and the BER system
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.
Sustainable Dundalk housing project designed to prolong the independence of older residents
Newly inaugurated RIAI president Paul Keogh selects four diverse UK projects that integrate sustainability without compromising on design