Northern Ireland’s South West College has announced that its new Erne Campus in Enniskillen will include the first educational building in the world built to the new passive house premium standard. The campus will be constructed on the site of the former Erne Hospital.

A major new £36m secondary school in Sutton, designed by passive architecture specialists Architype, has successfully received planning permission.

The rural Herefordshire village of Garway is busy planning for a sustainable future with construction of a new community centre to the passive house standard.

Three leading firms operating in the sustainable building and passive house sectors have joined forces to launch Kiss House, a new concept in architect-designed, turnkey housing. Kiss House is available in two-bed, three-bed and four-bed options, all built to the passive house standard.

Europe’s first purpose-built ‘3D textbook’ building has opened at the Rediscovery Centre in the old boiler house at Ballymun, which recently won the Green Building Award at the 2017 Green Awards.

A major research project by the Passive House Institute has found that heat energy consumption of the passive house district of Bahnstadt, in the city of Heidelberg, Germany, is roughly one-third that of conventional housing developments.

Planning permission for 12 new affordable passive homes, designed by architecture firm Architype, has been granted by Shropshire Council.

A unique new home in the Forest of Dean, designed by Loyn & Co Architects and nominated for this year’s RIBA Stirling Prize, features the second largest expanse of Internorm’s HS330 large scale glazing system used to date in Europe.

The UK’s first energy positive classroom has recently opened at Swansea University. Built by Swansea University’s Specific Innovation and Knowledge Centre, the Active Classroom generates, stores and releases its own solar energy.

Naked house, the pre-fabricated passive house construction company, is launching a new ultra-low cost construction option aimed at charitable and community based organisations.

The first airtightness test has taken place at phase three of the Silken Park development at Citywest, which is set to be Ireland’s largest residential passive house scheme. A diagnostic initial blower door test, done when the external envelope was completed on one of the development’s show houses, took place on December 12 and delivered a worldbeating result of 0.16 air changes per hour (ACH), well inside the passive house standard of 0.6 ACH and the best result this magazine has ever noted for a masonry building.

A stylish new home in South Manchester has achieved exceptional levels of airtightness through a combination of careful detailing and a high performance structure, provided by the Kingspan TEK building system.

Prefab passive house specialists naked house Ltd recently completed the installation of a fully integrated passive house services system at their Marsh Road project in Shropshire. MVHR and solar thermal system are a standard part of the naked house system, with extra optional modules to enhance the building’s potential to save the occupants’ running costs. At Marsh Road, this included a log burner, thermal store and central logic control system. 

Saffron Acres is a social housing development in Leicester that is set to be the largest affordable passive house scheme in the country.

Low energy building contractor and developer Linham Construction is currently on site with a new five-unit development in Fairview, Co Dublin. The project will feature five ultra low energy houses, all of which have already been sold to a housing association to provide for social housing needs in the area.