Local architectural firm to organise housing conference

NZEBRA, a subsidiary company of a Rathnew firm of architects, will organise Ireland’s first ever nNZEB (nearly zero energy buildings) Housing Conference.

The announcement was made by Minister of State Paul Kehoe – in the presence of Minister for Housing Simon Coveney, who will officially open the conference – at Government Buildings last week.

The conference will take place in the Riverside Park Hotel in Enniscorthy, Co Wexford, on Thursday, March 2.

nZebra is a subsidiary of Rathnew’s MosArt Ltd, which specialises in architectural, landscape and urban design. It’s partners, Tomás O’Leary (Managing Director) and Art McCormack pride themselves on delivering energy efficient residential schemes both in Ireland and abroad and have been providing sustainable building and landscape design services since 1993. They were responsible for the design, detailing and certification of Wexford County Council’s nZEB housing scheme in Enniscorthy which is one of the most energy efficient Local Authority projects in Ireland.

The firm is known for delivering energy efficient, comfortable and healthy homes which surpass building regulation requirements at negligible extra cost. MosArt is presently engaged in several projects around Ireland ranging from urban infill and redevelopment to large-scale sustainable housing.

nZEBRA was co-founded by Mr O’Leary, Mr McCormack and Andy Lundberg who, between them, have over 50 years’ experience in high performance building design and detailing as well as a proven track record in low energy, comfortable and healthy buildings.

The team were the first to bring passive housing to Ireland and their ambition now is to help the building design and construction community gear up for nZEB.

Ireland will introduce nZEB building compliance as mandatory from 2018 for all public buildings and from 2020 for all other buildings. The planned Enniscorthy conference is designed to brief all interested parties in what is involved in the process.

Upwards of 200 architects, house planners, local authority housing officers and building contractors are expected to attend the conference which has as its theme ‘Energy Efficiency for Everyone’.

Wexford County Council, the first Local Authority to construct a nZEB and passive house rated housing scheme, is fully supporting the conference which is also being promoted by the Construction Industry Federation. Its Director General, Tom Parlon will be one of the panel of speakers, together with Sean Armstrong, Department of Housing, Planning Community and Local Government, Dr Shane Colclough, Ulster University, and Andrée Dargan, County Architect with Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council. Other speakers include Pat Cox, former President of the European Parliament and Dragomir Tzanev from Bulgaria, who is head of EnEffect, a centre for energy efficiency in Bulgaria.

They will discuss the delivery of accelerated and affordable future proof housing in Ireland and delegates will be given a step-by-step ‘ behind the scenes’ introduction to the construction of an nZEB home.

This will be the first national nZEB housing conference to take place in Ireland and as such is generating considerable interest in the construction sector and among the professional bodies involved in meeting the deadline for the mandatory introduction of nZEB building regulations in 2018.

Further details pertaining to the conference can be found at www.nzebra.ie.