Harpa Concert Hall

  Harpa is a concert hall and conference centre, built in Reykjavik, Iceland. It attended it's opening concert on May 4, 2011. 

   The buidling facade is totally glazed with bottle green coloured glass which was inspired by the basalt landscape of Iceland.

   The construction of the buidling was started in 2007 and it took 4 years in completion and finally the building was open for the public in 2011. The floor area cover 28000 sq. meters and it stand  43 meters tall from the ground. The total estimated budget in the entire project is around €164 million.

    The buidling was designed by the Danish firm, Henning Larsen Architects in cooperation with Danish-Icelandic architect Olafur Eliasson. The idea behind the design at first was to mimic World Trade Center, Reykjavik, to some extent, but the plan was abandoned due to national financial crisis. The initial plan was to built a commercial and residential tower with hotel, restaurants, apartments and car park. The construction was halted soon after it started and took multiple pauses in between thats why it took 4 years in completion 

Nursing Homes Ireland

  Nursing home or retirement villages are accommodation for the people who are battling through the certain conditions and unable to take care of themselves. It is usually needed for the people who are somewhere in between being in the hospital and not well enough to manage at home alone.

Ireland has 460 nursing homes nationwide. These communities are growing with the time and now only trained professionals are hired to take care of the people in need.

  The mandatory services which a nursing home provide besides 24/7 assistance are physical therapy, speech therapy, memory care or dementia care.
There are particular standards that need to be followed in nursing particularly in Ireland and more or less around the globe as well.

• Individual Centered Care and Support 

                                                      

   Every individual must be treated according to their certain needs. Not everyone in the place requires the same amount of care and that should be taken into consideration.

   Their concerns should be acted upon in a timely and effective manner. Link to the community should be in accordance with their wishes. 

•  Effective Services

    Each resident needs to have their own care plan. They should be taken care of 24/7 to give them the homely feeling and there should be a certain amount of privacy with every individual to respect their dignity and autonomy.

• Safe Services

    Every individual must be safeguarded from neglect and abuse. Proper policy management for everyone is a must and personal belongings and finances should be kept private and taken care of.

• Health and Wellbeing

    There should be different and effective activity plans for every individual that meets their certain needs and preferences. These supports should be for their physical and mental wellbeing.

• Leadership and Management

    The quality of care being provided should be monitored, reviewed and if there is any scope of improvement, it should be improved.

Replacing Light Fixtures

  Replacing a light fixture can be a very risky task and DIY approach should be avoided, working on larger scale. Handy man or trained/professional electrician should be hired for the tasks like that.

  The steps for the task as follow:

Flipping a Breaker:

  The first approach in changing a light fixture is to shut the breaker off and proceed further, so there is no electricity flowing in the circuit. But even most of the times this is not enough, some junction boxes contain wiring from the multiple circuits. If that is the reason, it is advised to use a tester to check the flow of electricity, if the light in the tester starts glowing the there is still current flowing in the wire. In that case the best approach is to find the circuit breaker for particular circuit and turn it off then proceed.

Extra Hardware:

   Having extra hardware and tools always comes in handy having multiple types of wall bracket and tools can be helpful at sight. It is quite possible the mounting brackets may not work with the new light fixtures and it is good to have some extra at work.

   Another example is the screws, they can be too long or too short sometimes depending on the particular situation. Using a hacksaw in the situation like these is not the right approach because that will mess up the threads of the screws and will compromise on the fixture. Using bolt cutters is the best tool to be used in these situations.

Extension of Wires:

   Wires should be extended in the first place before applying a light fixture for future. In future if there is any renovation these extended wires can be a big help. Installing stab in connectors is the best approach. But trained technician should be doing the job because stab in connectors can compromise wiring and can be resulted in broken connection and other issue is if it is not installed properly it might strip away lots of wire insulation leaving bare copper winding exposed which can cause short circuit.

   There are many advantages but some disadvantages too, as it can’t be undone easily in future, the only way is to cut the wiring and start over again. Although some manufacturers have improved and introduced push-in clamps. But they are not widely used and cannot substitute screws as they are considered safest ones available.

Check Wiring:

   Wiring need to be checked before installing the light fixture. It is advised to check the wire rating and use the wiring which is rated for at least 90 degrees. A low rated wiring used can end up in fire. Although hanging fixture don’t normally require new wiring as they don’t heat up the wires that much. If changing wiring is not possible then you have to choose fixture that doesn’t carry this warning.

   Hanging light fixtures have canopies, that is mostly held by two screws, although aligning those two screws seems to be an easy enough job but it very necessary that they sit opposite to each other for a strong hold.

Extra Lights:

   Focal lights and headlamps must be kept at sight while working with the light fixtures. It cannot be determined how much time it will take before analyzing the fixtures, so it is considered to be a good practice to have them all the time and even in some situation day light may not be enough depends on the time of the day and the work site as well.

Check for Ground:

   New light fixtures come with ground wiring (green coated or bare copper). But in most of the older metal boxes, there may not be a ground wire. Adding a ground wire is not a difficult job and should be added if it is not there. But before proceeding it should be made sure that the box is itself grounded.

Edwardian Architecture

Introduction

   Edwardian architecture style started in 19^th century during the reign of the Edward VII (1901-1910). Its basically originated from Victorian era, which started back in 18^th century but Edwardian architecture is considered to be less ornate than Victorian.

   The characteristics of Edwardian era comprises on:

·       Colour: lighter colours were used; the use of gas and later electric lights caused designers to be less concerned about the need to disguise soot build up on walls compared to Victorian era architecture.

·       Patterns: "Decorative patterns were less complex; both wallpaper and curtain designs were more plain."

·       Clutter: "There was less clutter than in the Victorian era. Ornaments were perhaps grouped rather than everywhere."

   Most distinctive features of the Edwardian era are front garden, porches, sash windows, balconies, pebbled and mock timber frame on the upper story and less elaborate barge boards. The use of timber is quite elaborative in Edwardian period and can be seen on windows and even porches which are edged with timber railings. Other material that was quite heavily used in Edwardian era was red brick. Edwardian era tended towards elaborated balconies with ornate railings and massive windows dived into two parts where lower part tends to be clear while the upper part is normally divided with glazing bars and the other distinctive part is having generous front garden with huge amount of area but they became less common by the time.

    Most of the buildings of 19^th century in Limerick were not in the good shape in late 2000’s, the ceilings were falling down, were full of dry rot and wet rot, the floor boards were rotting. But soon they were taken care of and were renovated after they were listed by county council for preservation.

    Shannon rowing club still serves the same purpose for what it was built for and same is the case with other two i.e. Springdale and Glendale, both are used as private accommodation.

    Due to change in technology and building regulations there has been changes made in the structure such as now all of the buildings are well insulated, provisions of fire and safety is present and other things like windows are well glazed which makes the building efficient but there has been no changes made in the façade and even inside every inch has been preserved.

History

  Edwardian architecture was very evident in Limerick. Building having detached or semi-detached dwellings with unified terraces which can be seen today in number of places in Limerick such as O’Connell Avenue, North and South circular roads and Ennis road are some of the examples of it. Springdale is red brick house situated on Ennis road, Limerick. It was built in 1900, a two-storey house facing south with three-sided canted bay window to gabled breakfront. It was built using terracotta comb ridge tiles, an arch built with red bricks, red brick reveals, an attic opening and timber windows with limestone sills. Similar to other Edwardian structure it includes balcony, timber and porched gables and brick detailing.

  Its one of the rare ones in Edwardian style in Limerick, it is one of the fully detached period houses with huge garden area, which was very common in 19^th century.

  Springdale was designed by William Clifford Smith, a young Welsh architect. He was born in 1881 in Poole, Dorset. William Clifford designed number of buildings in Edwardian style in and around Limerick such as, Shannon Rowing Club which is located on Sarsfield Bridge and a townhall in Adare.

Exterior Features

   Red bricks were common choice for Edwardian architecture. But over the years use of roughcast walls and pebbledash have been seen as well. But due to changing trends in the renovations they have been smoothen over.

    Timber was widely used as well in the Edwardian architecture and in some of the country houses timber frames can be seen for external and internal walls. Timber styles has been mocked from Tudor styles and Edwardian adopted it pretty well.

    Art Nouveau style can be spotted on particular places on the exteriors of the building but interiors were more dominated in the particular style comparatively.

    Porches were the main features of the Edwardian era and we can find massive porches in almost all of the buildings in Limerick which were built in Edwardian period. Porches were really popular in that era. It was really important to have a porch area and to some extent considered to be a hard and fast rule. Moreover, the porches in that era use to reflect the financial status of the person, the rich people use to have very rare and unique materials in their porches which shows how equally important it was with the building itself and considered to be a status symbol.

    Springdale has a huge porch area too and as being one of the less detached houses of Edwardian era in Limerick it covers even more area then the semi- detached ones, as now the porch area increases to the three sides of the house. The porch is extending around the front main door and is on the same plain with the wall. The stain glass in a wooden panelled door is there which is pretty typical Edwardian feature. The entrance is covered merging with the façade itself and a small step at the entrance just to seclude the porch area from entrance.

Interior Features

   Edwardian era was very much influenced by the Art Nouveau style it was not only with the exteriors but interior too was highly influenced. The amount of detailing, embracing the modern styles and features and use of curves even in furniture was pretty common.

     ‘The curved shape of the furniture of that period is reflective of Art Nouveau style,’ explains Rebecca Hayes.

     Dark polished wooden floor was pretty common flooring type of the era and can be widely seen in Springdale as well. Dark herringbone design wooden floor really stands out in the interior and gives a very luxurious feel.

     Another thing that was introduced by Art Nouveau was floral design wallpapers and that became common too in the Edwardian era. The Springdale has couple of its focal walls featuring floral wallpapers. Due to the invention of electricity and it being very common, the houses moved away from having wallpapers and dark colours as the smoke marks were not a problem anymore and walls were not going to get dirty from sooty air

    Multi-paned sash windows, which were commonly popular in Georgian architecture, were again seen in Edwardian homes after years.

‘It was all about the big spaces and getting natural light in,’ Michael Parinchy explains. Which is why big sash windows and big patio doors that let in plenty of natural light became popular.

   Edwardian houses really needed to stand out so besides the usage of ornate and rare materials, they hard large windows and high ceilings almost everywhere inside giving the luxurious feel.

Conservation

    The 19^th century house has been conserved very professionally and with great interest all the above and known features of Edwardian era can still be seen and that is not just the case with Springdale but almost all the structures throughout Limerick has been preserved and renovated very carefully.

    In the case of Springdale a minimal intervention was taken place, building can easily be recognized from its older pictures and sightings. The style has been kept and renovated properly and conserved with same materials and elements as were used in the first while building it.

    There has been little change with the furniture inside but as considering it a modern accommodation it needs to be changed and other issue is that, its hard to find furniture of the same period and style and they will be expensive too.