The 'Belfast' timber roof truss - is it sustainable and relevant today?

In the early 19th century the requirement for clear span industrial buildings brought about the development of a variety of timber truss types. The Belfast truss was introduced circa 1860 to meet the demand for efficient wide span industrial buildings. It has essentially a bow-string configuration with a curved top chord, straight horizontal bottom chord and close-spaced lattice web. Several thousand still exist in Ireland, many in buildings of historic significance. This paper sets out to demonstrate the efficiency of the Belfast truss and to show that, by modern structural design criteria, the concept, member sizes and joint details were well chosen. Trusses in historic buildings can be replicated almost exactly as originally fabricated. Results of a theoretical study are compared with the experimental behaviour of two full-scale trusses: one a replacement truss, tested in the laboratory; the other an 80-year-old truss tested on site. In addition, experimental results from a manufacturers archive material of full-scale truss tests carried out about 100 years ago are compared with theoretical models. As well as considering their significance in building conservation the paper proposes that Belfast trusses are an attractive sustainable alternative to other roof structures. The analysis, design, fabrication and testing of trusses have resulted in a better understanding of their behaviour which is not only of historic interest and fundamental to the repair/restoration of existing trusses, but also relevant to the design of modern timber trusses and the promotion of a sustainable form of roof construction.

Food Roof Rio

The design and implementation of a roof-based aquaponic system for a favela house in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in conjunction with VHL University, Netherlands

Muldoon's Betweenness

Muldoon’s poetry frequently explores states of being ‘in-between’ and this can plausibly be related to his Catholic Northern Irish identity. He seems to be aware of the effects comprised in Derrida’s concept of différance, one version of which is the entre (‘between’). Nevertheless, Muldoon is more interested in exploring the experience of postmodernity than in offering a theory, or relating it to one culture. But this exploration has as many similarities with the concerns of existentialism and phenomenology as with deconstruction. Poems from Why Brownlee Left to Moy Sand and Gravel are discussed, and topics addressed include the South American exotic (new sources are suggested) and the troping on yarrow (compare Derrida’s pharmakon) in The Annals of Chile. Formal effects of repetition and difference reflect the themes. The redemption of repetition is studied with the help both of Kierkegaard and of Muldoon’s thoughts on the ‘magic mist’ of Irish romance.

Seasonal and diurnal variations in ultraviolet-B and ultraviolet-A irradiances at and below the sea surface at Helgoland (North Sea) over a 6-year period

Ultraviolet(UV) radiation at four wavelengths (305, 320, 340 and 380 nm) and photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) were measured from May 1994 to October 1999 using Biospherical UV radiometers. A surface reference sensor located on the roof of the Marine Station at Helgoland recorded values every 5 min, and an equivalent profiling underwater sensor was used for measurements in the sea at approximately monthly intervals. The ratio of 305-nm radiation to PAR varied seasonally, with a 14-fold increase from winter to summer. A much weaker seasonal trend (ca. 1.5-fold) was apparent in the ratio of 320-nm radiation to PAR, but there was no seasonal trend in the ratios of 340- or 380-nm radiation to PAR. The year-to-year variations in 305-nm radiation were also much greater relative to PAR than for the other UV wavelengths, but there was no evidence of a change in the 305 nm:PAR ratio over the study period. The ratios of both 305- and 320-nm radiation to PAR increased from dawn to midday, but those of 340- and 380-nm radiation were almost constant through the day, except shortly before sunrise and after sunset when the proportions of 340- and 380-nm radiation increased. Underwater measurements of PAR and UV suggest that the 1% depth for 305-nm radiation was little more than 1 m, but this estimate is valid only for summer and autumn because, in other seasons, few reliable readings for 305-nm radiation could be obtained underwater, and no attenuation coefficient could be calculated. The 1% depths recorded for the other UV wavelengths in the middle 6 months of the year were 2.0 m for 320 nm, 2.6 m for 340 nm and 4.6 m for 380 nm, compared with 12 m for PAR, but the attenuation of all wavebands increased sharply in October and remained higher until March. An analysis of the influence of sun angle, total column ozone concentration, the proportion of skylight, and cloud cover on the ratio of UV wavelengths to PAR in surface irradiance demonstrated that solar angle has a greater influence than ozone concentration on the irradiance at 305 nm, and that the typical occurrence of ozone

Textualising British Politics: Deconstructing the subject of British foreign policy

British politics has been described as a sub-discipline crying out for methodological and ideational cross-fertilisation. Where other areas of political science have benefited from new ideas, British politics has remained largely atheoretical and underdeveloped. This has changed recently with the rise of interpretivism but the study of British politics would also benefit from more serious engagement with poststructuralism. With this in mind, I examine how the thought of Jacques Derrida and deconstruction could be useful for thinking through the foundations of British politics, re-examining what appears natural or given and revealing the problematic and contradictory status of these foundations. After suggesting the need to 'textualise' British politics', I illustrate how deconstruction operates in a specific context, that of British foreign policy since 1997. This exploration reveals how certain decisions (such as the invasion of Iraq in 2003) became possible in the first place, and how their basis in an idea of an 'us' and a 'them', a coherent, autonomous subject separate from its object, is deeply problematic. Such a critical reading of British politics is impossible within the dominant interpretivist framework, and opens up new possibilities for thought which form an important supplement to existing ways of studying the field.

“Authentic Reproductions”: Staging the “Wild West” in Modern Irish Drama

This article examines two metatheatrical plays written by playwrights from the north of Ireland that bookend the twentieth century. The first is Ulster Literary Theatre (ULT) playwright Gerald MacNamara’s parodic, “proto-Pirandellian”4 The Mist That Does Be on the Bog (1909), which satirizes the peasant aesthetic of the “Abbey play” of the Irish Revival.5 The second is Marie Jones’s international hit, Stones in His Pockets (1999), a “play-full,” postmodern deconstruction of the commodification of Irish culture in the era of the Celtic Tiger. Although separated by exactly ninety years, the two plays can be connected through their critiques of the cultural politics of nationalism and globalization during the periods of the Irish Revival and the Celtic Tiger, respectively. Moreover, both plays are distinguished by their dramaturgical form, as the political critique of each is corporeally embodied in metatheatrical performance.

Class and Performance in the Age of Global Capitalism

This article addresses the relative absence of class-based analysis in theatre and performance studies, and suggests the reconfiguration of class as performance rather than as it is traditionally conceived as an identity predicated solely on economic stratification. It engages with the occlusion of class by the ascendancy of identity politics based on race, gender and sexuality and its attendant theoretical counterparts in deconstruction and post-structuralism, which became axiomatic as they displaced earlier methodologies to become hegemonic in the arts and humanities. The article proceeds to an assessment of the development of sociological approaches to theatre, particularly the legacy of Raymond Williams and Pierre Bourdieu. The argument concludes with the application of an approach which reconfigures class as performance to the production of Declan Hughes's play Shiver of 2003, which dramatizes the consequences of the dot.com bubble of the late 1990s for ambitious members of the Irish middle class.

Denial, Silence and the Politics of the Past: Unpicking the Opposition to Truth Recovery in Northern Ireland

There has been considerable and protracted debate on whether a formal truth recovery process should be established in Northern Ireland. Some of the strongest opposition to the creation of such a body has been from unionist political elites and the security forces. Based on qualitative fieldwork, this article argues that the dynamics of denial and silence have been instrumental in shaping their concerns. It explores how questions of memory, identity and denial have created a ‘myth of blamelessness’ in unionist discourse that is at odds with the reasons for a truth process being established. It also examines how three interlocking manifestations of silence – ‘silence as passivity,’ ‘silence as loyalty’ and ‘silence as pragmatism’ – have furthered unionists’ opposition to dealing with the past. This article argues that making peace with the past requires an active deconstruction of these practices.

The Lake House Extension

The project comprises of the re-ordering and extension of a 19th century country house in the extreme south west of Ireland. The original house is what can be termed an Irish house of the middle size. A common typology in 19th century Ireland the classical house of the middle size is characterised by a highly ordered plan containing a variety of rooms within a square or rectangular form. A strategy of elaborating the threshold between the reception rooms of the house and the garden was adopted by wrapping the house in a notional forest of columns creating deep verandas to the south and west
of the main living spaces. The grid of structural columns derived its proportions directly from the house. The columns became analogous with the mature oak and pine trees in the garden beyond while the floor and ceiling were considered as landscapes in their own right, with the black floor forming hearth stone, kitchen island and basement cellar and the concrete roof inflected to hold roof lights, a chimney and a landscape of pleasure on the roof above.

Aims / Objectives / Questions
1To restore and extend a “house of the middle size”, a historic Irish typology, in a sympathetic manner.
2To address the new build accommodation in a sustainable manner through strategies associated with orientation, micro climates, materiality and engineering both mechanical and structural.
3To explore and develop an understanding for two spatial orders, the enfilade room and non directional space of the grid.
4The creation of deep threshold space.
5Marbling as a finish in fair faced concrete
6Concrete as a sustainable building material