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Containing 7 apartments, commercial and craft space, a retail shop and a café as well as ancillary ‘green’ elements like bicycle cabins, recycling areas and composting units the project is very much an urban ‘poly-culture’, in terms of usage, function and metabolism.
Urbanistically the building is a four storey over basement, L shape, block, folded to maximise south facing area while respecting the building line, facing east, of the street. A masonry base supports a 3 storey timber frame superstructure, finished in render and timber and topped by a curved green (sedum) roof. Its design integrates garden terraces and solar panels into the upper reaches of the building. One of the three backland plots runs through to include a three storey building on Camden Street which was regenerated over the last few years by Kevin Quinn, Solearth and Daintree Ltd.
Energetically the building makes a large contribution to its own space and water heating needs. Space heating is generated by ground source heat pumps from three closed loop (200m deep) boreholes. The heat pump is (very conservatively) rated at a COP of 3 which means that for every unit of electricity in we will get 3 units of heat energy out—which is actually up to 10 times more efficient than electrical heating (the norm in most commercial apartments) when power station and transmission inefficiencies are taken into consideration. Ultimately the heat pump will be powered by renewable electricity, bought through the national grid. Six solar thermal panels (17.5sqm) integrated onto the building’s elevations and terraces will contribute to meeting the hot water needs. A gas fired high efficiency boiler provides back-up to both the heat pump and the solar hot water systems. While the solar thermal panels will meet up to 60% of hot water needs over the year, there may well be more hot water than required in summer.
Heat was to be distributed in under-floor heating but this was excised in a value engineering exercise which, with hindsight, has not been economically justified.
Most of the apartments in Daintree are designed to make use of heat gains from sunlight through classic passive solar design approaches; larger windows to the south, less glazing to the north and so on. This aspect should allow a large proportion of the space heating to be met passively in those areas. In the commercial parts of the building servicing is largely passive also; natural day-lighting is the objective in the large ground floor workshop and display area, which benefits from high floor to ceiling heights with clerestory and roof windows ‘stealing’ daylight as often as possible. Ventilation relies on natural buoyancy with fresh air being fed in through the basement, and drawn out at high level through fenestration (extract in the basement only is also mechanical).
Constructionally, the building is a combination of masonry and timber frame, the masonry being to basement and ground floor. In the upper three floors the building’s fabric is highly efficient, particularly utilising the full benefits of the timber frame construction method. Here 140mm timber studs filled with sheep’s-wool insulation are supplemented by an additional 38mm of wood fibre insulation (doubling as a service cavity) to lead to a heat retention of 33% better than building regulations (0.19W/msqK). The timber construction also of course allows us create a breathing wall, which allows vapour and humidity from both inside the wall and inside the space to diffuse outwards while preventing air leakage. This ‘breathability’ is critical in green buildings as part of the initiative to create healthy interiors now that the full impact of indoor air quality problems borne of pollutants in construction generally, paintwork and furniture, not to mention conditions like asthma, sick building syndrome and so on become more and more evident. Internal walls and floors are insulated with cellulose insulation and acoustically isolated using rubber-cork based matting.
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The Daintree Building is a mixed-use, sustainable urban building on Pleasant’s Place, just off Camden St. Dublin , writes Brian O’Brien of Solearth Architects. Conceived in 1999 it has been a long development process—but by late September Daintree should be open for business and the ever innovative Daintree (Paper Co) Ltd will have a new home, one appropriate to the delightfulness of their products and their focus on nature’s generosity for their raw materials. 
