Multi-award winning Belfast-based property developer, Fraser Millar, has launched Northern Ireland’s second large-scale residential passive house development – a 74-unit scheme of detached and semi-detached homes at a total project value of £30m.

Diageo has chosen developer Ballymore as its partner to deliver the transformation of 12.6 acres of its iconic St James’s Gate site into the first “zero carbon” district in Dublin.

During a speech last year Theresa May challenged the construction industry to halve the energy use of new buildings, and to halve the cost of retrofit. But we already know how to meet these challenges, writes Peter Rickaby, and much more difficult tasks lie ahead.

The first phase of Agar Grove, the UK’s largest passive house development, has now been completed for the London Borough of Camden. Hawkins\Brown acted as lead architect on the project, while Architype acted as passive house delivery architect for the first phase of the scheme, which provides 38 homes that are all socially rented to existing estate tenants.

Crawley Borough Council’s first passive house development, designed by Accredited Passivhaus Design (APD), has been completed and certified to the passive house standard.

Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown’s passive house policy also leaves the door open for alternative approaches, provided their equivalence can be demonstrated. But what does this mean? 

Southern Housing Group, one of the largest housing associations in the south east of England, has delivered its first ever scheme built to the passive house standard. Built on a 1.5 acre site, Cameron Close is a £4.2 million development of 16 semi-detached family houses and 12 sheltered apartments in Freshwater on the Isle of Wight.

BioSpark - a newly-formed joint venture between Imperative Energy and Sustainable BioPolymers - has announced its intention to invest €40 million in the development of a next generation bio-processing research, innovation and manufacturing centre in Claremorris, County Mayo. Biospark says the venture will create 180 jobs initially, and could create up to 300 jobs in total over the next three years.

A recent study undertaken by Dublin City Council could serve to shatter many commonly held misconceptions about how existing buildings can perform when compared to new build, even simply just in terms of running costs.

When the two worlds of heritage and development collide opinions frequently become polarised and fraught with difficulty. There are few more vexed issues, as Tim Carey, Heritage Officer with Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council reveals