County Louth
County Louth is a county in the Republic of Ireland. It is part of the Mid-East Region, it is named after the village of Louth. Louth County Council is the local authority for the county. According to the 2016 census, the population of the county was 128,884. County Louth is colloquially known as ` the Wee County', it is the 18th-largest in terms of population. It is the smallest of the sixth-largest by population. With its average total population and its small size, Louth is the second-most densely populated county in Ireland, behind Dublin, the fourth-most on the island of Ireland. County Louth is named after the village of Louth, which in turn is named after Lugh, a god of the ancient Irish; the placename has had various spellings. Lú is the modern simplified spelling; the county is steeped in myth and history, is a setting in the Táin Bó Cúailnge. It saw the influence of the Vikings, as seen in the name of Carlingford Lough, they established a longphort at Annagassan in the ninth century. At this time Louth consisted of three sub-kingdoms, each subject to separate over-kingdoms: Conaille.
The whole area became part of the O'Carroll Kingdom of Airgialla early in the 12th century under Donnchad Ua Cerbaill. At the same time, the area was removed from the diocese of Armagh and the See for the Diocese of Airgíalla or Clogher was transferred to Louth c. 1130-1190. A number of historic sites are in the county, including religious sites at Monasterboice, Mellifont Abbey and the St Mary Magdalene Dominican Friary; the Normans occupied the Louth area in the 1180s, it became known as'English' Oriel, to distinguish it from the remainder which remained in Irish hands. The latter became the McMahon lordship of Oriel of County Monaghan. In the early 14th century, the Scottish army of Edward Bruce was repulsed from Drogheda. Edward was defeated, losing his claim to the High Kingship of Ireland along with his life, in the Battle of Faughart near Dundalk, by a chiefly local force led by John de Bermingham. In 1189, a royal charter was granted to Dundalk after a Norman nobleman named Bertram de Verdun erected a manor house at Castletown Mount.
In 1412, a royal charter was granted to Drogheda. This charter unified the towns of Drogheda-in-Meath and Drogheda-in-Uriel as a County in its own right, styled as ‘the County of the town of Drogheda’. Drogheda continued as a County Borough until the setting up of County Councils, through the enactment of the Local Government Act 1898, which saw all of Drogheda, including a large area south of the River Boyne, become part of an extended County Louth; until the late 16th century, Louth had been a part of Ulster, before being included as part of Leinster after a conference held at Faughart between the Chiefs of Ulster, on the Irish side, the Archbishop of Cashel and the Earl of Ormonde on that of the English. The 16th and 17th centuries featured many skirmishes and battles involving Irish and English forces, as Louth was on the main route to'the Moiry Pass' and the Ulster areas in rebellion and as yet uncolonised. Oliver Cromwell attacked Drogheda in 1649 slaughtering the Royalist garrison and hundreds of the town's citizens.
Towards the end of the same century, the armies of the warring Kings, James II and William of Orange, faced off in south Louth during the build-up to the Battle of the Boyne. Drogheda held for James under Lord Iveagh, but surrendered to William the day after the battle of the Boyne. In 1798, the leaders of the United Irishmen included Bartholomew Teeling, John Byrne, Patrick Byrne, all from Castletown, they were betrayed by informers, notably a Dr. Conlan, who came from Dundalk, an agent provocateur called Sam Turner, from Newry. Several leaders were hanged; the priest and scientist Nicholas Callan was from Darver. County Louth is the 18th largest county in terms of population, but it is the most densely populated county in Ireland outside Dublin, with a population density of 160 people per km2 double the national average; the majority of the county's population lives in the two main towns of Drogheda and Dundalk the overall 6th- and 8th-largest urban areas in Ireland respectively. The local authority is Louth County Council, offices in Dundalk, which provides a number of services including.
Since the implementation of the Local Government Reform Act 2014 on 1 June 2014, County Louth has been subdivided into four Local Electoral Area's for elections to Louth County Council and three Municipal districts for local government which are, Ardee Municipal District Drogheda Borough District Dundalk Municipal DistrictKey: For elections to Dáil Éireann, Louth is represented by the five member Louth constituency which takes in the entire county of Louth and two electoral divisions in County Meath. The Electoral Act 2009 merged the electoral divisions of St. Mary's and Julianstown, collectively known as "East Meath" in County Meath with County Louth to form one Louth Dáil constituency; the Report on Dáil a
Lloyd's of London
Lloyd's of London known as Lloyd's, is an insurance and reinsurance market located in London, United Kingdom. Unlike most of its competitors in the industry, it is not an insurance company; these underwriters, or "members", are a collection of both corporations and private individuals, the latter being traditionally known as "Names". The business underwritten at Lloyd's is predominantly general insurance and reinsurance, although a small number of syndicates write term life assurance; the market has its roots in marine insurance and was founded by Edward Lloyd at his coffee house on Tower Street in c. 1686. Today, it has a dedicated building on Lime Street within which business is transacted at each syndicate's "box" in the underwriting "Room", with the insurance policy documentation being known traditionally as a "slip"; the market's motto is Fidentia, Latin for "confidence", it is associated with the Latin phrase uberrima fides, or "utmost good faith", representing the relationship between underwriters and brokers.
Having survived multiple scandals and significant challenges through the second half of the 20th century, most notably the asbestosis affair, Lloyd's today promotes its strong financial "chain of security" available to promptly pay all valid claims. At the end of 2018 this chain consisted of £53.5 billion of syndicate-level assets. In 2018 there were 84 syndicates managed by 55 managing agencies that collectively wrote £35.5bn of gross premiums on risks placed by 303 approved brokers. Around 50 per cent of premiums emanated from North America, 30 per cent from Europe and 20 per cent from the rest of the world. Direct insurance represented around 70 per cent of the premiums covering property and casualty, while the remaining 30 per cent was reinsurance; the market collectively reported a pre-tax loss of £1bn for 2018, resulting from above-average major claims and a weak investment environment. The market began in Lloyd's Coffee House, owned by Edward Lloyd, in around 1686 on Tower Street in the City of London.
This establishment was a popular place for sailors and ship-owners, Lloyd catered to them with reliable shipping news. The coffee house soon became recognised as an ideal place for obtaining marine insurance; the shop was frequented by mariners involved in the slave trade. Historian Eric Williams notes: "Lloyd's, like other insurance companies, insured slaves and slave ships, was vitally interested in legal decisions as to what constituted'natural death' and'perils of the sea'." Lloyd's obtained a monopoly on maritime insurance related to the slave trade and maintained it until the early 19th century. Just after Christmas 1691, the small club of marine insurance underwriters relocated to Lombard Street; this arrangement carried on until 1773, long after the death of Edward Lloyd in 1713, when the participating members of the insurance arrangement formed a committee and underwriter John Julius Angerstein acquired two rooms at the Royal Exchange in Cornhill for "The Society of Lloyd's". The Royal Exchange was destroyed by fire in 1838.
It was rebuilt by 1844. In 1871, the first Lloyd's Act was passed in Parliament which gave the business a sound legal footing. Around that time, it was unusual for a Lloyd's syndicate to have six backers. A marine underwriter named Frederick Marten is credited for first identifying this issue and creating the first "large syndicate" of 12 capacity providers. By the 1880s Marten's syndicate had outgrown many of the major insurance companies outside Lloyd's. A subsequent Lloyd's Act in 1911 set out the Society's objectives, which include the promotion of its members' interests and the collection and dissemination of information. On 18 April 1906 a major earthquake and resulting fires destroyed over 80 per cent of the city of San Francisco; this event was to have a profound influence on building practices, risk modelling and the insurance industry. Lloyd's losses from the earthquake and fires were substantial though the writing of insurance business overseas was viewed with some wariness at the time.
While some insurance companies were denying claims for fire damage under their earthquake policies or vice versa, one of Lloyd's leading underwriters, Cuthbert Heath, famously instructed his San Francisco agent to "pay all of our policy-holders in full, irrespective of the terms of their policies". The prompt and full payment of all claims helped to cement Lloyd's reputation for reliable claim payments and as an important trading partner for US brokers and policyholders, it was estimated that around 90 per cent of the damage to the city was caused by the resultant fires, as such since 1906 fire following earthquake has been a specified insured peril under most policies. Heath is credited for introducing the now used "excess of loss" reinsurance protection for insurers following the San Francisco disaster. Heath's background was that he became an underwriting member of Lloyd's in 1880, upon reaching the minimum age of 21, on J. S. Burrows' syndicate. Within a year he was underwriting for himself on a three-man syndicate, in 1883 he opened a brokerage business.
In 1885 he wrote the first fire reinsurance contra
Imperial College London
Imperial College London is a public research university located in London, England. In 1851, Prince Albert built his vision for a cultural area composed of the Victoria and Albert Museum, Natural History Museum, Royal Albert Hall, Royal Colleges, the Imperial Institute. In 1907, Imperial College was established by Royal Charter, bringing together the Royal College of Science, Royal School of Mines, City and Guilds College. In 1988, the Imperial College School of Medicine was formed through a merger with St Mary's Hospital Medical School. In 2004, Queen Elizabeth II opened the Imperial College Business School; the main campus is located with a new innovation campus in White City. The college has a research centre at Silwood Park, teaching hospitals throughout London. Imperial is organised through faculties of natural science, engineering and business, its emphasis is on the practical application of technology. With more than 140 countries represented on campus and 59% of students from outside the UK, the university has a international community.
In 2018–19, Imperial is ranked 8th globally in the QS World University Rankings, 9th in the THE World University Rankings, 24th in the Academic Ranking of World Universities, 8th in Reuters Top 100: World's Most Innovative Universities. Student and researcher affiliations include 14 Nobel laureates, 3 Fields Medalists, 1 Turing Award winner, 74 Fellows of the Royal Society, 87 Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering, 85 Fellows of the Academy of Medical Sciences; the college's origins can be traced back as far as the founding of the Royal College of Chemistry on Hanover Square in 1845, with the support of Prince Albert and parliament. Following some financial trouble, this was absorbed in 1853 into the newly formed Government School of Mines and Science Applied to the Arts, located on Jermyn Street; the school was renamed the Royal School of Mines a decade later. The medical school has roots in many different school across London, the oldest of which dates back to 1823, with the foundation of the teaching facilities at the West London Infirmary at Villiers Street.
Known as Charing Cross Hospital Medical School, it was designed to provide medical education for the needs of a university. This was followed in 1834 when Westminster Hospital surgeons started taking students under their care. Established on Dean Street, the school was forced to close in 1847, but was reopened in 1849 with a new specimen museum; the first teaching at St Mary's Hospital hospital in Paddington began in 1851, with St Mary's Hospital Medical School established in 1854. Proceeds from the Great Exhibition of 1851 were designated by Prince Albert to be used to develop a cultural area in South Kensington for the use and education of the public. Within the next 6 years the Victoria and Albert and Science museums had opened, joined by the Natural History Museum in 1881, in 1888 the Imperial Institute; as well as museums, new facilities for the royal colleges were constructed, with the Royal College of Chemistry and the Royal School of Mines moving to South Kensington between 1871 and 1872.
In 1881 the Normal School of Science was established in South Kensington under the leadership of Thomas Huxley, taking over responsibility for the teaching of the natural sciences and agriculture from the Royal School of Mines. The school was granted the name Royal College of Science by royal consent in 1890; as these institutions were not part of universities, they were unable to grant degrees to students, instead bestowed associateships such as the Associateship of the Royal College of Science. The Central Institution of the City and Guilds of London Institute, formed by the City of London's livery companies, was opened on Exhibition Road by the Prince of Wales, founded to focus on providing technical education, with courses starting in early 1885; the institution was renamed the Central Technical College in 1893, becoming a school of the University of London in 1900. At the start of the 20th century there was a concern that Britain was falling behind its key rivals – Germany – in scientific and technical education.
A departmental committee was set up at the Board of Education in 1904, to look into the future of the Royal College of Science. A report released in 1906 called for the establishment of an institution unifying the Royal College of Science and the Royal School of Mines, as well as – if agreement could be reached with the City and Guilds of London Institute – their Central Technical CollegeOn 8 July 1907, King Edward VII granted a Royal Charter establishing the Imperial College of Science and Technology; this incorporated the Royal College of Science. It made provisions for the Central Technical College to join once conditions regarding its governance were met, as well as for Imperial to become a college of the University of London; the college joined the University of London on 22 July 1908, with the Central Technical College joining Imperial in 1910 as the City and Guilds College. The main campus of Imperial College was constructed beside the buildings of the Imperial Institute, the new building for the Royal College of Science having opened across from it in 1906, the foundation stone for the Royal School of Mines building being laid by King Edward VII in July 1909.
As students at Imperial had to study separately for London degrees, in January 1919, students and alumni voted for a petition to make Imperial a university with its own degree awarding powers, independent of the University of London. In response, the University of London changed its regulations in 1925 so that the courses taught only at Imperial would be examined by the university, enabling students to ga
World Heritage Site
A World Heritage Site is a landmark or area, selected by the United Nations Educational and Cultural Organization as having cultural, scientific or other form of significance, is protected by international treaties. The sites are judged important to the collective interests of humanity. To be selected, a World Heritage Site must be an classified landmark, unique in some respect as a geographically and identifiable place having special cultural or physical significance, it may signify a remarkable accomplishment of humanity, serve as evidence of our intellectual history on the planet. The sites are intended for practical conservation for posterity, which otherwise would be subject to risk from human or animal trespassing, unmonitored/uncontrolled/unrestricted access, or threat from local administrative negligence. Sites are demarcated by UNESCO as protected zones; the list is maintained by the international World Heritage Program administered by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, composed of 21 "states parties" that are elected by their General Assembly.
The programme catalogues and conserves sites of outstanding cultural or natural importance to the common culture and heritage of humanity. Under certain conditions, listed sites can obtain funds from the World Heritage Fund; the program began with the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World's Cultural and Natural Heritage, adopted by the General Conference of UNESCO on 16 November 1972. Since 193 state parties have ratified the convention, making it one of the most recognized international agreements and the world's most popular cultural program; as of July 2018, a total of 1,092 World Heritage Sites exist across 167 countries. Italy, with 54 sites, has the most of any country, followed by China, France, Germany and Mexico. In 1954, the government of Egypt decided to build the new Aswan High Dam, whose resulting future reservoir would inundate a large stretch of the Nile valley containing cultural treasures of ancient Egypt and ancient Nubia. In 1959, the governments of Egypt and Sudan requested UNESCO to assist their countries to protect and rescue the endangered monuments and sites.
In 1960, the Director-General of UNESCO launched an appeal to the member states for an International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia. This appeal resulted in the excavation and recording of hundreds of sites, the recovery of thousands of objects, as well as the salvage and relocation to higher ground of a number of important temples, the most famous of which are the temple complexes of Abu Simbel and Philae; the campaign, which ended in 1980, was considered a success. As tokens of its gratitude to countries which contributed to the campaign's success, Egypt donated four temples: the Temple of Dendur was moved to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Temple of Debod was moved to the Parque del Oeste in Madrid, the Temple of Taffeh was moved to the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in the Netherlands, the Temple of Ellesyia to Museo Egizio in Turin; the project cost $80 million, about $40 million of, collected from 50 countries. The project's success led to other safeguarding campaigns: saving Venice and its lagoon in Italy, the ruins of Mohenjo-daro in Pakistan, the Borobodur Temple Compounds in Indonesia.
UNESCO initiated, with the International Council on Monuments and Sites, a draft convention to protect the common cultural heritage of humanity. The United States initiated the idea of cultural conservation with nature conservation; the White House conference in 1965 called for a "World Heritage Trust" to preserve "the world's superb natural and scenic areas and historic sites for the present and the future of the entire world citizenry". The International Union for Conservation of Nature developed similar proposals in 1968, they were presented in 1972 to the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm. Under the World Heritage Committee, signatory countries are required to produce and submit periodic data reporting providing the World Heritage Committee with an overview of each participating nation's implementation of the World Heritage Convention and a "snapshot" of current conditions at World Heritage properties. A single text was agreed on by all parties, the "Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage" was adopted by the General Conference of UNESCO on 16 November 1972.
The Convention came into force on 17 December 1975. As of May 2017, it has been ratified by 193 states parties, including 189 UN member states plus the Cook Islands, the Holy See and the State of Palestine. Only four UN member states have not ratified the Convention: Liechtenstein, Nauru and Tuvalu. A country must first list its significant natural sites. A country may not nominate sites. Next, it can place sites selected from that list into a Nomination File; the Nomination File is evaluated by the International Council on Monuments and Sites and the World Conservation Union. These bodies make their recommendations to the World Heritage Committee; the Committee meets once per year to determine whether or not to inscribe each nominated property on the World Heritage List and sometimes defers or refers the decision to request more information from the country which nominated the site. There are ten selection criteria – a site must meet at least one of them to be included on the list
Royal Institute of British Architects
The Royal Institute of British Architects is a professional body for architects in the United Kingdom, but internationally, founded for the advancement of architecture under its charter granted in 1837 and Supplemental Charter granted in 1971. Named the Institute of British Architects in London, it was formed in 1834 by several prominent architects, including Decimus Burton, Philip Hardwick, Thomas Allom, William Donthorne, Thomas Leverton Donaldson, William Adams Nicholson, John Buonarotti Papworth, Thomas de Grey, 2nd Earl de Grey. After the grant of the royal charter it had become known as the Royal Institute of British Architects in London dropping the reference to London in 1892. In 1934, it moved to its current headquarters on Portland Place, with the building being opened by King George V and Queen Mary, it was granted its Royal Charter in 1837 under King William IV. Supplemental Charters of 1887, 1909 and 1925 were replaced by a single Charter in 1971, there have been minor amendments since then.
The original Charter of 1837 set out the purpose of the Royal Institute to be:'… the general advancement of Civil Architecture, for promoting and facilitating the acquirement of the knowledge of the various arts and sciences connected therewith…' The operational framework is provided by the Byelaws, which are more updated than the Charter. Any revisions to the Charter or Byelaws require the Privy Council's approval; the design of the Institute's Mycenaean lions medal and the Latin motto Usui civium, decori urbium has been attributed to Thomas Leverton Donaldson, honorary secretary until 1839. The RIBA Guide to its Archive and History records that the first official version of the badge of the Lion Gate at Mycenae was used as a bookplate for the Institute's library and publications from 1835 to 1891, when it was redesigned by J. H. Metcalfe, it was again redesigned in 1931 in 1960 by Joan Hassall. The description in the 1837 by-laws was: "gules, two lions rampant guardant or, supporting a column marked with lines chevron, all standing on a base of the same.
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the RIBA and its members had a leading part in the promotion of architectural education in the United Kingdom, including the establishment of the Architects' Registration Council of the United Kingdom and the Board of Architectural Education under the Architects Acts, 1931 to 1938. A member of the RIBA, Lionel Bailey Budden Associate Professor in the Liverpool University School of Architecture, had contributed the article on Architectural Education published in the fourteenth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, his School, was one of the twenty schools named for the purpose of constituting the statutory Board of Architectural Education when the 1931 Act was passed. Soon after the passing of the 1931 Act, in the book published on the occasion of the Institute's centenary celebration in 1934, Harry Barnes, FRIBA, Chairman of the Registration Committee, mentioned that ARCUK could not be a rival of any architectural association, least of all the RIBA, given the way ARCUK was constituted.
Barnes commented that the Act's purpose was not protecting the architectural profession, that the legitimate interests of the profession were best served by the architectural associations in which some 80 per cent of those practising architecture were to be found. The RIBA Guide to its Archive and History has a section on the "Statutory registration of architects" with a bibliography extending from a draft bill of 1887 to one of 1969; the Guide's section on "Education" records the setting up in 1904 of the RIBA Board of Architectural Education, the system by which any school which applied for recognition, whose syllabus was approved by the Board and whose examinations were conducted by an approved external examiner, whose standard of attainment was guaranteed by periodical inspections by a "Visiting Board" from the BAE, could be placed on the list of "recognized schools" and its successful students could qualify for exemption from RIBA examinations. The content of the acts section 1 of the amending act of 1938, shows the importance, attached to giving architects the responsibility of superintending or supervising the building works of local authorities, rather than persons professionally qualified only as municipal or other engineers.
By the 1970s another issue had emerged affecting education for qualification and registration for practice as an architect, due to the obligation imposed on the United Kingdom and other European governments to comply with European Union Directives concerning mutual recognition of professional qualifications in favour of equal standards across borders, in furtherance of the policy for a single market of the European Union. This led to proposals for reconstituting ARCUK. In the 1990s, before proceeding, the government issued a consultation paper "Reform of Architects Registration"; the change of name to "Architects Registration Board" was one of the proposals, enacted in the Housing Grants and Regeneration Act 1996 and re-enacted as the Architects Act 1997. RIBA Visiting Boards continue to assess courses for exemption from the RIBA's examinations in architecture. Under arrangements made in 2011 the validation criteria are jointly held by the RIBA and the Architects Registration Board, but unlike the ARB, the RIBA va
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist, short story writer, poet and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde and is regarded as one of the most influential and important authors of the 20th century. Joyce is best known for Ulysses, a landmark work in which the episodes of Homer's Odyssey are paralleled in a variety of literary styles, most famously stream of consciousness. Other well-known works are the short-story collection Dubliners, the novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Finnegans Wake, his other writings include three books of poetry, a play, his published letters and occasional journalism. Joyce was born in Dublin into a middle-class family. A brilliant student, he attended the Christian Brothers-run O'Connell School before excelling at the Jesuit schools Clongowes and Belvedere, despite the chaotic family life imposed by his father's alcoholism and unpredictable finances, he went on to attend University College Dublin. In 1904, in his early twenties, Joyce emigrated to continental Europe with his partner Nora Barnacle.
They lived in Trieste and Zurich. Although most of his adult life was spent abroad, Joyce's fictional universe centres on Dublin and is populated by characters who resemble family members and friends from his time there. Ulysses in particular is set with precision in the alleyways of the city. Shortly after the publication of Ulysses, he elucidated this preoccupation somewhat, saying, "For myself, I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal." On 2 February 1882, Joyce was born at 41 Brighton Square, Dublin, Ireland. Joyce's father was John Stanislaus Joyce and his mother was Mary Jane "May" Murray, he was the eldest of ten surviving siblings. James was baptised according to the Rites of the Catholic Church in the nearby St Joseph's Church in Terenure on 5 February 1882 by Rev. John O'Mulloy. Joyce's godparents were Ellen McCann. John Stanislaus Joyce's family came from Fermoy in County Cork, had owned a small salt and lime works.
Joyce's paternal grandfather, James Augustine Joyce, married Ellen O'Connell, daughter of John O'Connell, a Cork Alderman who owned a drapery business and other properties in Cork City. Ellen's family claimed kinship with Daniel O'Connell, "The Liberator"; the Joyce family's purported ancestor, Seán Mór Seoighe was a stonemason from Connemara. In 1887, his father was appointed rate collector by Dublin Corporation. Around this time Joyce was attacked by leading to his lifelong cynophobia, he suffered from astraphobia. In 1891 Joyce wrote a poem on the death of Charles Stewart Parnell, his father was angry at the treatment of Parnell by the Catholic Church, the Irish Home Rule Party and the British Liberal Party and the resulting collaborative failure to secure Home Rule for Ireland. The Irish Party had dropped Parnell from leadership, but the Vatican's role in allying with the British Conservative Party to prevent Home Rule left a lasting impression on the young Joyce. The elder Joyce had the poem printed and sent a part to the Vatican Library.
In November, John Joyce was suspended from work. In 1893, John Joyce was dismissed with a pension, beginning the family's slide into poverty caused by his drinking and financial mismanagement. Joyce had begun his education at Clongowes Wood College, a Jesuit boarding school near Clane, County Kildare, in 1888 but had to leave in 1892 when his father could no longer pay the fees. Joyce studied at home and at the Christian Brothers O'Connell School on North Richmond Street, before he was offered a place in the Jesuits' Dublin school, Belvedere College, in 1893; this came about because of a chance meeting his father had with a Jesuit priest called John Conmee who knew the family and Joyce was given a reduction in fees to attend Belvedere. In 1895, now aged 13, was elected to join the Sodality of Our Lady by his peers at Belvedere; the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas continued to have a strong influence on him for most of his life. Joyce enrolled at the established University College Dublin in 1898, studying English and Italian.
He became active in literary circles in the city. In 1900 his laudatory review of Henrik Ibsen's When We Dead Awaken was published in The Fortnightly Review. Joyce wrote a number of at least two plays during this period. Many of the friends he made at University College Dublin appeared as characters in Joyce's works, his closest colleagues included leading figures of the generation, most notably, Tom Kettle, Francis Sheehy-Skeffington and Oliver St. John Gogarty. Joyce was first introduced to the Irish public by Arthur Griffith in his newspaper, United Irishman, in November 1901. Joyce had written an article on the Irish Literary Theatre and his college magazine refused to print it. Joyce had it distributed locally. Griffith himself wrote a piece decrying the censorship of the student James Joyce. In 1901, the National Census of Ireland lists James Joyce as an English- and Irish-speaking scholar living with his mother and father, six sisters and three brothers at Royal Terrace (now Inverness Ro
Renzo Piano
Renzo Piano, is an Italian architect. His notable buildings include the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, The Shard in London, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City and Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center in Athens, he won the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1998. Piano was born in Genoa, into a family of builders, his grandfather had created a masonry enterprise, expanded by his father, Carlo Piano, his father's three brothers, into the firm Fratelli Piano. The firm prospered after World War II, constructing houses and factories and selling construction materials; when his father retired the enterprise was led by Renzo's older brother, who studied engineering at the University of Genoa. Renzo studied architecture at the Milan Polytechnic University, he graduated in 1964 with a dissertation about modular coordination supervised by Giuseppe Ciribini and began working with experimental lightweight structures and basic shelters. Piano taught at the Polytechnic University from 1965 until 1968, expanded his horizons and technical skills by working in two large international firms, for the modernist architect Louis Kahn in Philadelphia and for the Polish engineer Zygmunt Stanlislaw Makowski in London.
He completed his first building, the IPE factory in Genoa, in 1968, with a roof of steel and reinforced polyester, created a continuous membrane for the covering of a pavilion at the Milan Triennale in the same year. In 1970, he received his first international commission, for the Pavilion of Italian Industry for Expo 70 in Osaka, Japan, he collaborated with the family firm, which manufactured the structure. It was lightweight and original composed of steel and reinforced polyester, it appeared to be artistic and industrial; the 1970 Osaka structure was admired by the British architect Richard Rogers, in 1971 the two men decided to open their own firm and Rogers, where they worked together from 1971 to 1977. The first project of the firm was the administrative building of B&B Italia, an Italian furniture company, in Novedrate, Italy; this design featured suspended container and an open bearing structure, with the conduits for heating and water on the exterior painted in bright colors. These unusual features attracted considerable attention in the architectural world, influenced the choice of the jurors who selected Piano and Rogers to design the Pompidou Center.
In 1971 the thirty-four-year old Piano and Richard Rogers, thirty-eight, in collaboration with the Italian architect Gianfranco Franchini, competed with the major architectural firms in the United States and Europe, were awarded the commission for the most prestigious project in Paris, the Centre Georges Pompidou, the new French national museum of 20th century art. The award came a surprise, to the architectural world, since the two were little-known, had no experience with museums or other major structures; the New York Times declared that their design "turned the architecture world upside down". More it turned architecture inside-out, since in the new museum, the apparent structural frame of the building and the heating and air conditioning ducts were on the exterior, painted in bright colors; the escalator, in a transparent tube, crossed the facade of the building at a diagonal. The building was an astonishing success transforming the character a run-down commercial section near the Marais in Paris, made Piano one of the best-known architects in the world.
The media dubbed the style of the building as "high-tech", but this was disputed by Piano. "Beaubourg," he said, "was a joyous urban machine, a creature which might have come out of a Jules Verne novel, a sort of bizarre boat in dry dock... It is a double provocation. To consider it as a high-tech object is a mistake." In 1977 Piano ended his collaboration with Rogers and began a new collaboration with engineer Peter Rice, who had assisted in the design of the Pompidou Center. They established their offices in Genoa. One of their first projects was a plan for the rehabilitation of the old port of Otranto from an industrial site into a commercial and tourist attraction, their first major building was the Menil Collection, in art museum for the art collector Dominique de Menil. The chief requirements of the owner for this building was to make the maximum use of natural light in the interiors. Piano wrote, "Paradoxically, the Menil Collection, with its serenity, its calm, its discretion, is much more modern, scientifically speaking, than the Beaubourg."
The Menil Collection building, with its simple gray and white cubic forms, is the stylistic opposite of the Pompidou Center. The technological innovations were not expressed on the facade, but in the high-tech but discreet systems of shutters and screens and air conditioning which allowed maximum illumination while protecting against the intense Texas heat and sunlight. In the mid-1980s Piano and his firm took on a wide variety of projects, using the most advanced technology available, but, in contrast to the Pompidou Center, as discreetly as possible, his portable pavilion for IBM was an example. It composed of a series of pyramids of polycarbonate supported by a wooden frame, could be transported in a truck, it was designed to integrate the scenery outside into displays in the interior. He designed a two major reconstruction projects in northern Italy.
