It sounds like an impossibility: a high density, architectural, zero energy home on the tightest of back garden sites, adaptable to the needs of everyone from empty nesters to a family of six without opening a toolbox. But sometimes a project comes along that redefines what is possible.
‘Architecture is the blissful moment when the site and brief come together,’ says architect Ruth Butler of the challenge she and her engineer husband faced in designing their family home, on a difficult urban site by the Hampshire coast. But it was a challenge they met and exceeded, because even though they hadn’t even planned to build a passive house, they soon realised the design was on course to meet the onerous energy standard anyway.
Sited on the side of a hill in the west of Ireland, a new home that meets the NZEB and passive house standards boasts a locally-made and super-insulated timber-frame, and is designed to fold cleverly into the rural landscape.
A ground-breaking new passive house in Bristol makes superb use of an urban plot to create a bright and spacious home built from ecological materials that — thanks to its huge solar roof and Tesla battery pack — produces more energy than it uses, making it one of the first UK projects to meet the passive house ‘plus’ standard, while also blitzing the RIBA 2030 Climate Challenge’s targets for operational energy.
When Welsh sustainable building specialists PYC decided to start making their own timber frames, they got down to work designing and building their own factory. Once that was finished, it was time to test their system on their first order: to build their own passive house certified offices right next door – and to be bold enough to decide not to install central heating.
Flat-pack furniture has become a fixture of modern living, but what happens when the same concept is applied to housing – and when the client is an architect seeking to build to passive house and nearly zero energy building levels?
Early in October, Norwich City Council’s Goldsmith Street development become both the first passive house and the first social housing project to win the Stirling Prize, British architecture’s most coveted award, with the judges calling it “high-quality architecture in its purest, most environmentally and socially conscious form”. Leading building energy expert Dr Peter Rickaby visited the scheme for Passive House Plus to see this ground-breaking project for himself.
The deep and comprehensive refurbishment of the Miesian Plaza complex on Dublin’s Baggot Street provides a radical blueprint for how to transform mid-20th century city office buildings into comfortable, healthy and super low energy spaces that support sustainable transport and working patterns.
The unique split-level, wedge-shaped plan of this striking and award-winning new passive house in Cork isn’t just for show — it is a carefully thought-out response to an extremely challenging site, and an example of how great architecture can create beautiful, sustainable buildings in even the most unlikely of spaces, and with a fraction of the upfront carbon costs of traditional build methods.
While this striking new larch-clad home in rural East Sussex 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.
The first phase of the hugely ambitious Agar Grove redevelopment in Camden was finished in April 2018. Not only is it the largest passive house scheme in the UK to date, it also aims to be a model for sustainable urban regeneration and for creating liveable spaces at the heart of our cities.
The best architecture responds skilfully and sensitively to its surroundings, so when a long and narrow plot beside a busy road became available in the Somerset village of Chew Magna, architect David Hayhow set out to design a passive house, inspired by nearby farm buildings, that would be both private yet filled with light — quite the challenge given the site’s tight restraints.
With this stunning, award-winning passive house in Camden, the legendary engineer Max Fordham — together with bere:architects & Bow Tie Construction — has produced a simple and beautiful urban home with no wet heating system that draws on his lifetime of work applying the principles of simplicity, practicality and replicability to the design of building services.
Designed in a traditional farmhouse cluster on a greenfield site amid the hedgerows of rural Cork, this new passive home by the River Sullane pays deep attention not only to energy efficiency but also to natural light, elegant design and preserving the ecology of its sensitive setting.
Hiding in woodland in an area of outstanding natural beauty, the Fishleys passive house manages to be both strikingly contemporary yet deeply sensitive to its rural setting. It also boasts a masterfully crafted timber frame structure with one of the best airtightness results this magazine has ever published.
With Old Holloway Cottage, located in rural Herefordshire, architect Juraj Mikurcik and his wife Joyce have lovingly crafted a beautiful-yet-simple passive home that is constructed from timber, insulated with straw, and finished with a palette of natural, durable materials — and all for a surprisingly small budget.
Appearances can be deceptive, and with his second A1-rated passive house in County Wexford, architect Zeno Winkens has designed a fairly traditional Irish home that also manages to include some unique design touches.
The Deerings, a large new certified passive house in the Hertfordshire village of Harpenden, is the stunning result of meticulous attention to design, energy efficiency and ecological materials by its architects, builders and a homeowner so taken by the experience that it led to an investment in an innovative passive house start-up.
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.
Choosing newly-harvested green oak — which shrinks and moves as it dries — for the millimetre-precise demands of passive house construction was a bold move by Phil Garnett and his wife Yvonne, but one that ultimately gave them one of the most unique and ground-breaking passive homes in the UK.
A new family home in County Armagh blends together a traditional, clustered farmhouse style and a modern aesthetic so seamlessly, you would never even guess it’s a certified passive house.
While a tight budget meant some of the more ambitious eco features planned for this simple and graceful new farmhouse had to be dropped, it still manages to meet Ireland’s standard for nearly zero energy buildings (nZEBs) thanks to a combination of superb detailing and fabric-first design.
When architect Tony Godwin wandered into a seminar on the passive house standard at Ecobuild ten years ago, it was the start of a journey that would eventually see him design and build his own passive home on a sloping site — and learn some hard lessons along the way to achieving a comfortable, ultra-low energy family home with tiny energy bills.
In the classic story of the three little pigs, the big bad wolf may have blown down the first little piggy’s house of straw with consummate ease — but he wasn’t reckoning with this pioneering, energy bill-shredding Suffolk project, the UK’s first load-bearing straw bale passive house