While embracing traditional farmstead design made it trickier for this new build home in the Scottish Highlands to meet the coveted passive house standard, mixing modern standards of super-insulation with vernacular farmhouse architecture ultimately led to the creation of a very special home for proprietors Jeanette and Jon Fenwick — one that picked up a coveted UK Passivhaus Award in 2016.

From a distance Steel Farm looks like a traditional Northumberland farmhouse, with its sandstone exterior and cluster of outbuildings. But inside, it is something very different.

As interest in sustainable building continues to escalate, Construct Ireland is increasingly unearthing buildings that betray an ambition to break new ground under a plethora of green criteria. John Hearne visited one such house in County Louth, and found a project driven by passive house and BER scale-topping ambitions combined with on-site energy and water supply strategies and a commitment to the use of green materials