Clonakilty eco house

A new house in west Cork offers a green vision for the future of Irish home building: not only is it A-rated, airtight and highly energy efficient, it’s built with ecological materials that are manufactured in Ireland too.
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!

A new house in west Cork offers a green vision for the future of Irish home building: not only is it A-rated, airtight and highly energy efficient, it’s built with ecological materials that are manufactured in Ireland too.

When Construct Ireland asked Vivienne Brophy of the UCD Energy Research Group to select projects for this feature she suggested that the second year UCD Architecture students make the selection, using UCD’s sustainable building rating system tool to verify their choice

Construct Ireland Journalist Frank Coles investigates the impact posed by the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive

A new timber frame house in the Wicklow hills is arguably the most airtight building ever built in Ireland, boasting wood fibre external insulation and an obsessive attention to sealing


Newly inaugurated RIAI president Paul Keogh selects four diverse UK projects that integrate sustainability without compromising on design

Kirk Shanks, Senior Researcher at the Sustainability Research Development Group, the Focas Institute, DIT describes the development of this new sustainable generation.

Richard Douthwaite explores the best options available to solve the intermittency problem of wind energy and help Ireland to harness its famously abundant natural resources