OLS Architects is an award winning registered architectural design practice specialising in highly energy efficient buildings of all types. OLS Architects attended the first English speaking European PassivHaus Designer Course (CEPHD)in the University of Strathclyde Glasgow in 2010 and became the first of only a handful of Irish Architectural practices to hold the title in 2011.
In recognition of the innovative sustainable design ethos of OLS Architects Duncan Stewart’s 2011 RTÉ series, About the House, featured not one but two OLS PassivHaus projects; the new build passive house in Tullow which won the Saint-Gobain National Trophy Award and one of the first Irish PassivHaus Retrofit projects, in Castlebridge. We are currently in discussions with Duncan regarding his 2012 series of EcoEye with a view to featuring our first Passive School extension.
Tullow Passive House
The brief for the Passive House in Tullow Co. Carlow was interesting insofar as the client, first and foremost, wanted a house that suited the site, their needs and their new family lifestyle. The site itself was stunning and well suited to a Passive House design with magnificent views of Mount Leinster to the south. The client was concerned that a lot of Passive Houses they had researched tended to look out of place in the Irish landscape and they wanted something that would be more sympathetic on their family farmland. The client wanted us to, therefore, design a house that fitted within the Irish landscape and secondly, if possible, reach the PassivHaus Standard. The overall aesthetic, therefore, was of primary importance to the client.The client had a very clear brief that could be broken down into four distinct but related uses. They required 4 no. bedrooms, a farmhouse type kitchen/ family room, a large entertainment area and finally a large garage/ shed. We came up with the design concept that was a contemporary interpretation of the traditional Irish closed courtyard farmstead. Each element of the brief would form a distinct element around a simple courtyard not unlike the out-houses would have done in the older traditional farmstead courtyards.
To echo the tradition forms we decided to use tradition materials such as slate roofs with tight eaves and verge details and simple rendered walls. Because the garage had a different function we decided to give it a different form/ mass on the site and so it has a mono-pitched roof.
The flat roofed sections of the house at the two entrances enabled us to break up the massing of the overall building so that we did not have one continuous and possibly monotonous ridge line. It also allowed us to introduce brie soleil on the south and west facades to stop the building over- heating in the summer time, an important consideration in any PassivHaus.
In Ireland we have a very mild climate compared to our German and Austrian counterparts with the mean temperatures in Ireland being very favourable when trying to achieve the PassivHaus standard. Put simply, this particular design could not reach the PassivHaus standard in mainland Europe given its “C” or “U” shaped configuration!