Coillte Teoranta

The building is the first all timber office complex in Ireland. It covers almost 2,300m2 of floor space and provides accommodation for almost 100 staff working in a wide range of forestry related disciplines.
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!

The building is the first all timber office complex in Ireland. It covers almost 2,300m2 of floor space and provides accommodation for almost 100 staff working in a wide range of forestry related disciplines.

Of huge importance to our national identity and one of the major features of the rural Irish countryside are the derelict small cottages, scattered across the land, that have long fallen into ruin. Often situated in Irelands most beautiful and remote areas, Terry Cunningham, Rural Enterprise Adviser of the Southern Tipperary office of Teagasc sought to revitalise and fully utilise these charming and unique dwellings from our past.

Imagine moving into a house without a heating system – what would you do? Contact the developer and demand they put one in immediately? Call a solicitor and sue the builder? Or sit back and enjoy living in a house, designed to meet your expectations of comfort without any recourse to a space heating system. Jason Walsh met the people behind Ireland’s drive toward the passive house.

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

When residents of Hollywood solemnly and publicly state the need to combat climate change, it is easy to reject as self-righteous, opportunistic bleating. When it’s a resident of Hollywood, County Wicklow, and the environmental statement is in the form of a poroton-block house infused with sustainable features, it provokes an altogether different response, as Lenny Antonelli reveals.
Part of the Mater Hospital redevelopment, the recently completed Mater Orchard building is a first class example of how to integrate sustainable building strategies into a substantial building whilst keeping extra cost to a minimum.

With 36 years experience in ecological architecture, Paul Leech of Gaia Ecotecture possesses a formidable knowledge of international green design. Fresh from picking up the best ecological building 2010 Lama award for the pioneering Navan Credit Union – and a favourable review in Prof George Baird’s Sustainable Buildings in Practice: What the Users Think - a global survey of green buildings - Leech describes a handful of inspirational green exemplar projects from around the world.

In the hands of the right architect, meeting the passive house standard needn’t involve compromising on design. Construct Ireland visited a recently certified passive house which shows that a seamless low energy architecture is possible

Richard Douthwaite proposes a new bank-free, debt-free way of financing property purchase and development to get the market working again and clear up the mess left by the bubble.