For my thesis research John suggested I'd go visit the buildings at the Botanic Gardens and this time...I did have my camera,yaaay!
I had already been at the Gardens in first year, loooooong time ago, so it was good to go there again! They were as beautiful as I'd remember them, although I didn't see any fluffy pretty squirrel this time!
The tour they gave us was about the big green houses, in particular the restoration of the Palm House built by James Boyd.the biggest challenge with green houses is that they expand with the heat and the change in temperature. When I say they expand I mean they expand A LOT! We're talking over 15 cm!!! So they invented a system of heating the glass over and over till it reached enough elasticity to cope with the unpredictable Irish weather and the humidity coming from the plants inside. Brilliant! In the past the interior tropical climate (oh, it was so nice to stand in there...!) had caused metal corrosion leading to a state of dangerous decay and instability of the columns. So they took the challenge: the whole complex was dismantled, removed off- site for restoration, returned to site, re-erected and new services were installed!In the finished building the rear stone building was retained and restored with new visitors access for the disabled and renewed service access to the internal Palm house gantry walkway (which plays an important structural role as it is used as reinforced lateral support that transfers the load onto the reconstructed rear wall, taking some stress away from the columns). The two side wings of the house were simultaneously restored along with the work to the central Palm House. To protect against new possible corrosion they used advanced modern painting technology which is more environmentally friendly and has a low permeability rate. The tour then moved on to the library, unfortunately they did not give us access but we stayed in the atrium and learnt about the very valuable collections they have (there's a book which , ten years ago, was worth over 10 millions Irish pounds....!) the thing that I liked the most about it tho it was - obviously - the use of the Golden Ratio in the glass partition of the facade. No wonder it looked beautiful...!
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