The brief: public housing, full standard, no excuses
Shanganagh is one of the largest public housing schemes Ireland has built in decades: more than 550 social, affordable and cost-rental homes on one site, all to the Passivhaus standard. Public housing is exactly where the standard earns its keep, because the people paying the heating bills are the people least able to absorb a performance gap.
The approach: design the repetition, then protect it
At this scale the work is not one clever detail, it is a small set of details repeated hundreds of times without drift. As Passive House designer we built the PHPP models across the blocks, standardised the junctions into a catalogue the site team could follow, and kept the airtightness strategy intact through every design revision between planning and construction.
The result: scale stops being the argument against
Certified Passivhaus homes at a scale few countries have attempted, with capped space-heating demand and tested airtightness in every home, not a sample. Schemes like this are why the cost question has moved on: the premium shrinks when the details repeat, and Shanganagh is the proof developers point to.
