Welcome to the Irish summer edition of Passive House Plus! This issue of the magazine features an amazing new curved timber passive house in Limerick, and the stunning transformation and deep retrofit of a 1970s bungalow on the Sligo coast. It also features a unique new passive house in Dundee with an emphasis on natural, low embodied carbon materials, and beautifully designed new passive-certified student accommodation in Cambridge, built with cross-laminated timber. This edition also has two special reports: one comparing the embodied carbon of six typical house build specifications, and another looking at the rise of CO2 monitors in preventing the spread of Covid-19. We also examine changes to RIBA’s 2030 Climate Challenge, ask whether any progress has been made in four years of the government’s Rebuilding Ireland housebuilding programme, and cast a critical eye over whether 3D printing is really the future of construction.
