A gateway building on a difficult slope
The site falls away west towards the River Slaney, with Enniscorthy and the N11 beyond. Early excavation hit deep marl and began to slide, which also raised a plain question: how do you get into a building on ground this steep? The answer was to notch the building into the hill and enter from the high side across a bridge, so the constraint became the approach. Four storeys on a north–south axis, with the top floor set back as a gallery for the penthouse offices that face the valley.
An office is a hard building to keep airtight
Offices run warm on their own. People, computers and lighting all give off heat, so the fabric usually gets a pass and the comfort problem is handed to the cooling system. Passivhaus does not allow that. The external wall panels were hung off the steel frame on 100mm brackets to keep insulation and the air barrier continuous, the entrance bridge was detached from the building so it carries no heat out, and fibreglass replaced steel where reinforcement would have bridged the envelope. When a supplier could not prove the airtightness of their roofing panels, we built a mock-up on site and pressure-tested it rather than take the claim on trust.
Modelled, built, then measured
The airtightness test came back at 0.15 air changes an hour, four times tighter than the standard asks for. Glazing was tuned orientation by orientation to keep the offices from overheating, and the timber-panel construction held embodied carbon to 434 kg CO₂e/m², comfortably under the RIAI's 750 benchmark for offices. It is the first office building in Ireland certified to the Passivhaus standard, and it has been occupied and working since handover.
