From the Construct Ireland archives

Lenny Antonelli visited a recently refurbished complex of social housing flats in Galway city that has combined excellence in urban regeneration with energy efficiency and major strides towards sustainability

In many ways local authorities have become some of Ireland’s most progressive developers. Jason Walsh visited Ardee, County Louth to look at the latest in a long line of new civic offices that are redefining local government in sustainable terms.

If you’re not assessing the environmental performance of your suppliers and their products, it’s rapidly becoming a case of “caveat emptor”. Many of the world’s biggest companies are now buying green, and the Irish government is about to follow suit. Ignore the issue and you put your company at a competitive disadvantage, argues Brian O’Kennedy, managing director of Clearstream Solutions

In the third installment of a new feature on international green buildings, Lenny Antonelli takes a look at more innovative, sustainable and striking buildings from around the world.

Germany has a reputation for high quality craftsmanship, an attention to detail and a positive attitude to sustainable and healthy housing. Jason Walsh visited a new German-built house in County Dublin to see if the expertise can be exported.

Brian Homan, Joint Managing Director of leading consulting engineers Homan O’Brien Associates describes a nursing home currently being built that is adopting a sustainable building approach to deliver healthy, comfortable accommodation at low running costs.

Construct Ireland tracked down the busy director of Limerick Civil Trust to talk about the sterling work already done, current projects and to ponder the implications of recent FAS cutbacks.

Four years ago the construction industry was focused on building big and fast — but at the same time, a small team was carefully and ecologically retrofitting a terraced Dublin house on a tight budget according to passive house principles.

Box-like, small windows, primary colour renders - there is a common misconception that building to the passive house standard involves sacrificing design freedom for the sake of thermal performance. Not so, argues passive house guru Tomás O’Leary of MosArt and the Irish Passive House Academy, as his selection of architecturally diverse buildings reveals.

The mainstreaming of sustainable building technologies is manifesting itself in a growing number of developers seeking to find the greener option. Jason Walsh describes a recent project where airtight timber frame construction meets high-tech solar thermal in a North Dublin House of Tomorrow funded scheme which is delivering low carbon results