Passive House Plus

🎟️ Have you secured your ticket for Better Homes yet? 🎟️ If not, here’s another reason to book your early bird ticket now! Our opening session will dive into #InnovativeThinking on #Housing, featuring renowned international experts like Gerardo Wadel from Societat Orgànica, Judit Kimpian, author of Energy | People | Buildings, Indy Johar from Dark Matter Labs and Architecture00 and Dearbhla Lawson from The Land Development Agency. 📆 15th November 🕛 9 am 📍 the Gibson Hotel, Dublin Don’t miss the chance to join them on the day and become a driving force for innovation in Ireland's housing sector. Register now! ➡️ https://lnkd.in/dSTP85nt #SMARTER4EU #LIFEAmplifier #EnergyTransition #CINEA #GreenHomes

The Thursday long read - Bureaux de Solares Bauen, Strasbourg In early 2021, as part of our then series focusing on international green buildings, Lenny Antonelli wrote about a formerly abandoned building in Strasbourg, that had been reimagined and renewed as a passive house 'plus' certified three-story office building. https://lnkd.in/eUKKJp4p

East Sussex home with a striking farmyard inspired design For the Thursday long read we look at a striking larch-clad home in rural East Sussex that ultimately received the backing of the local planners, there was just one catch: it had to meet the passive house standard before its owners could move in. https://lnkd.in/eZgCt3sP

Deep retrofit transforms big, complex South Dublin home The Thursday long read: At first glance, this sprawling house in Blackrock would appear to be a nightmare candidate for a deep energy upgrade — large and sprawling, and with a mix of structures built at different times and with different materials. But guided by the passive house standard, the team behind it managed to turn a G-rated energy guzzler into a healthy and very-low energy family home – complete with an A rating. https://lnkd.in/ekMZ84pV

A timely reshare of this article Andy Simmonds and I wrote, on the idea of zero carbon construction. Is it real? If not, what’s the best that we can - and should - do? Could reshare this every week, as it remains constantly relevant!

It’s wonderful to see this kind of discussion happening within organisations like RIBA. Wherever possible buildings should be designed based on strategies which have been proven to perform well for occupants and planet alike, based on post occupancy evaluation results. One observation though: If a building strategy - such as building to the passive house standard - has already been found to work consistently well across monitoring studies of thousands of buildings, should we worry less about post occupancy evaluation? Should we be aiming to have a framework in place where the main requirement for POE falls not on proven standards like passive house, but on new, experimental approaches? How about a rating scale where design approaches and standards are higher rated if we have more POE data showing high performance levels on eg energy and indoor environmental quality, and lower rated if we either have little or no POE data on them, or if the data we have shows poor performance?

How to decarbonise our housing stock For the Thursday long read, Lenny Antonelli writes that rapidly decarbonising our cold, leaky dwellings is the greatest challenge facing the building industry, one fraught with complexity and risk. Given that the UK faces similar challenges to Ireland – in a similar climate, with similar housing stock – what can we learn from British efforts to meet this challenge? Leading UK green building association the AECB has put forward a proposal that could help to chart a new course through these choppy waters. https://lnkd.in/ecPqGnqB

The house that costs €70 a year to heat For our long read this week, we look back a striking contemporary house, designed around an existing timber chalet, that managed to go passive on a budget for one lucky family of six, all while inadvertently blitzing Ireland’s nearly zero energy building standard. https://lnkd.in/eQzNzNwn

On TOMORROW! 💪Be a legend in your own lunchtime! 🕑Weds 25 Sept 1pm Join our step-by-step webinar to complete the #ScottishPassivhausEquivalent consultation live during your lunch break. https://lnkd.in/exDJrCGB Friends of the Earth Scotland Alex Rowley MSP Stop Climate Chaos Scotland Architects Climate Action Network (ACAN) Scotland Architects Declare The Scottish Ecological Design Association (AECB) Association for Environment Conscious Building Built Environment - Smarter Transformation Passive House Accelerator Passive House Plus Energy Action Scotland Scottish Federation of Housing Associations Good Homes Alliance LETI

The Thursday long read - Elegant Mayo ‘longhouse’ gets A1 rating The home of a local passive house builder, this super low energy home in County Mayo is inspired by traditional building forms in the west of Ireland — and it blitzed Ireland’s nearly zero energy building standard a whole five years before it was set to become mandatory. Words: John Cradden | Photography: Michael Horan https://lnkd.in/eigGebmE