All in a day

Today on our walking tours throughout Dublin, we witnessed the convergence of traditional with contemporary architecture.  This was most evident with the Dublin castle still standing amidst numerous contemporary buildings.  Many times we encourage students to observe their surroundings and design with harmony in mind, Dublin provides a stark contrast to this idea. 

 

 
We were also super excited when the guard at the Dublin Convention Center granted us special access to document the architectural elements within the building!  The building was truly inspiring and difficult to capture the details with our cameras.  However, we documented what we could in photos and took the rest in by experiencing the magnificent space inside and noted the features that made that space distinct.

 

 
A clear example of hyperbolic geometry was discovered within the structure of a modern-looking bridge, and an elliptical conic section was evident in the shape of a roof on a modern apartment building. We noted multiple uses of reflection, rotational, and translational symmetry in various features along with an example of random pattern in the rooftop of a large bank.

 

 

We spent a good amount of time looking at the Samuel Beckett and Sean O'Casey Bridges.  We were in awe of the magnitude of the Samuel Beckett bridge with its contemporary design.  More thought went into the design and its relationship to the structural loads being distributed as the Beckett bridge is a modern take on the traditional suspension bridge.  We also found a couple old draw bridges which didn't seem to be in use any more.  We discovered one was built in 1912, and we found it very interesting to examine its features and imagine how it was once used.