Cambridge chooses passive house comfort for Kings’ College students
Written by Anthea Lacchia
Most people think of cold, cramped and poor-quality buildings when they think of student accommodation, but two new passive house residences at King’s College, Cambridge are rewriting the rulebook, with their focus on occupant comfort, architectural quality, and an enlightened, long-term view of construction costs.
Pitch perfect - Beguiling Dundee passive house puts wood into woodland
Written by David W Smith
An intriguing new passive house in Dundee takes the traditional ‘box’ form associated with the standard and turns it on its head, using a series of pitched roofs and different claddings to make it feel more like a traditional city terrace than a single dwelling – built with a heavy emphasis on carbon sequestering materials.
Climate action plan sets embodied carbon targets for construction
Written by News Desk
Ireland’s new climate action plan, which was published on Thursday 4 November, contains the country’s first official targets for limiting the embodied carbon of construction materials.
Poor ventilation a Covid risk in 40 per cent of classrooms, study finds
Written by News Desk
Coventry University research has found that 40 per cent of primary school classrooms examined in a study did not have an adequate ventilation rate to combat the spread of Covid-19.
Sligo deep retrofit delivers warmth, light & mountain views
Written by John Hearne
Complete with butterfly roofed extension, this fabric first renovation has turned a cold and uninspiring 1970s bungalow into a cosy A-rated modern home, with some clever design touches helping to open the house up to wide-angle views and dramatic coastal light.
Above the curve - Limerick passive house showcases precision timber engineering
Written by John Cradden
Sometimes it takes the constraints of a challenging site to bring out the best possible design, and that was certainly the case for this Limerick City passive house, where the project team managed to deliver a unique, curving passive house in response to a tricky urban plot.
This issue features a new nursery school in Paris, built to the Passive House Institute’s low energy building standard.
Seeing the wood for the trees - Placing ecology at the heart of construction
Written by Lenny Antonelli
In recent years, as energy efficiency targets for new buildings have tightened, attention has turned to cutting the embodied carbon of buildings by switching from materials like concrete and steel to lower carbon alternatives like timber. But if we are serious about solving the ecological emergency as well as stabilising the climate, we must look even further than embodied carbon, and think more deeply about the core values we apply to materials and buildings, and the manner in which we use them.
By Lenny Antonelli & AECB CEO Andy Simmonds
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The emergence of thermal bridging & thermal bypass
Written by Marc O'Riain
What’s to show from four years of Rebuilding Ireland?
Written by Mel Reynolds
In 2017 the government promised it would deliver 50,000 homes over the next five years as part of its Rebuilding Ireland programme. But figures from the first four years show it has fallen well short, writes Mel Reynolds.
AirMaster’s flagship MVHR awarded passive house certification
Written by News Desk