About Us

Solearth Ecological Architecture, founded in 1998, is a professional architecture practice at the forefront of innovative sustainable design in Ireland. Solearth are members of the RIAI and RIBA with offices in the award winning Daintree Building, Dublin. We have projects throughout Ireland and Northern Ireland and are available to work on projects anywhere.

Solearth is a partnership between Brian O’Brien and Mike Haslam, two architects who are passionate about ecology and architecture. They believe that a concern for nature and sustainability - as the key influencers of architectural design - offers the opportunity to improve lives, provide a professional, future-proofed service to clients and can advance architecture itself.

Sustainability is the core work and philosophy of the practice: each one of our projects addresses the key sustainability issues of its programme, the success of which is not just illustrated in peer recognition through awards but also, and more importantly, through user and client satisfaction.

We believe that each project requires a unique approach and through this we realize buildings with very low energy requirements, create healthy buildings and hopefully make delightful architecture. Solearth use the principles of passive design, bioclimatic design and passive solar architecture to create unique solutions for our clients. On some projects we work to create Living Buildings and meet the performance levels of the Passiv / Passive House standard. Though because we believe every project, site and client are individual and because many of the sustainability aspect that are important to us (beauty, healthfulness, natural materials where possible) are not given adequate importance in some rating systems, we resist the imposition of inflexible yardsticks on the design process preferring to strive for holistic simple solutions ( broad rather than narrow sustainability). 

Both partners are active in teaching architecture and sustainability - at university and professional level – and act as sustainable design consultants to other professionals.