Completed early this year, the new Centre for Medicine at the University of Leicester is by far the largest single building in the UK to meet the passive house standard — and not surprisingly, its design and construction posed tough new challenges for how to meet the rigorous low energy standard on such a large, complicated building.

Although full passive house training is regarded as the best way to gain an in-depth understanding of all aspects of passive house design, some construction professionals may not have the time or resources to be able to attend the typical two week passive house course. 

This new award-winning two-building extension to a primary school in the south of Wales delivers healthy, ultra low energy school buildings – one of which is passive house certified – while pushing the boundaries of timber engineering. 

In this blog post, Devyn Olsen-Sawyer of the Irish Green Building Council reviews Ireland's recently complete QualiBuild programme, which upskilled Irish construction workers in low energy building techniques.

Leading passive house rooflight supplier DVS recently designed, supplied and installed two large Passive House Institute-certified glass roofs for the University of Leicester’s Centre for Medicine, the largest non-residential building built to the passive house standard in the UK. 

Passive house building envelope specialist training is now available at Ecological Building Systems, complementing the array of award-winning training courses Ecological have been delivering for almost 15 years now 

The head teachers of an East London school put their interest in sustainable building into practice by adding a new passive house extension — and the results already seem to be paying off for pupils.

The AECB, the Association for Environment Conscious Building, is hosting a number of passive house courses this spring – ranging from courses to become certified passive house designers to “bite size” training sessions for designers who wish to familiarise themselves with the standard.

This summer, work was completed on the Enterprise Centre at the University of East Anglia, which might just be the most sustainable large building ever constructed in Britain.

PassivClass, a new passive-certified modular classroom in London, aims to end the days of cold and draughty school prefabs – including a structure made from reclaimed materials.

A new research centre in Northern Ireland could stake a claim as being one of the greenest buildings on these islands. Not only is it passive, it boasts a whole suite of ecological features, and aims to be at the cutting edge in the research and development of new sustainable and renewable technologies.

This issue’s international selection features a developer-built passive house in Philadelphia, a big new research centre in Frankfurt, a sleek family home in Vienna, and a new low-energy factory in Canada where passive timber buildings will be prefabricated.

The team behind a series of passive house schools in Wolverhampton have used the lessons learned from in-depth monitoring of the first two buildings to make the third even better — and cheaper to build.

Following a successful World Green Building Week series of seminars and demonstrations in September, Ecological Building Systems has announced a series of new training courses and seminars. 

The Department of Education has made its commitment to energy efficiency and CO2 reduction clear in developing and bringing into practice targets for primary school design that aim for less than half of the accepted good practice in the field. Project coordinator John Dolan, Senior Engineer with the Department of Education explains how this approach works within normal Departmental budgetary limits to create school buildings that show the way ahead for building designers.