Facing the challenge of how to bring a Victorian home with damp old brick walls up to a modern low energy standard, architect Brendan O’Connor deployed an innovative solution: build entirely new and super-insulated timber frame walls within the old structure.

Lark Rise is an elegant new passive house in rural Buckinghamshire designed by bere:architects, but it is more than ‘just’ a passive house. Because it produces and stores so much of its own energy through on-site solar power, it is a certified passive house ‘plus’, and over the following pages, its architect Justin Bere explains how dwellings like this can play a key role in decarbonising our economies and societies in the coming decades.

With a decade of experience designing primary schools to the passive house standard under their belt, Architype have now designed the UK’s fi rst passive secondary school — and all of the evidence suggests there is no better way to ensure a healthy, comfortable environment that is supremely conducive to learning.

A stunning new passive house in Cork breaks the conventions of passive house form with a design that manages to be both dramatic yet discreet at the same time, inspired by a US project to contort itself beautifully into its steeply sloping site.

This issue features a passive house ‘plus’ certifi ed three-storey offi ce building in Strasbourg, France.