My Exploration of the World and Myself: Decentralization

My story...

I left Vancouver on April 4 2010 to live one year abroad. I arrived in London- spent a week with my cousins, headed over to Ireland to see some more cousins and tour the country, back to London for a day- and arrived in Paris on April 28th, 2010. I found an apartment and started working on May 10th. From May 2010 until February 2011 I lived the Parisian life and took advantage of living in the epicenter of the world by traveling and exploring numerous nearby countries such as: Algeria, Portugal, Switzerland, Spain, England, Ireland, Northern Ireland, the south of France, Belgium, Morocco, and South Africa.
This blog takes you into the wonderful adventures of my life with stories and pictures galore.
I was due back to Vancouver on April 1, 2011- where I took my position back after my one year leave. I flew back to Vancouver on March 27, 2011. It has been good to be back- I am so blessed as I am surrounded by such great people!!! So good to see friends and family again after 1 year!
Just because I'm back in Vancouver to what was my "normal" life... doesn't mean the adventures and blogging stop here. The adventures will continue I'm sure... so the only way to stay informed with my random experiences is to come back to this page! So add it to your favourites.

last updated: April 2, 2011.

Sunday 18 April 2010

Decentralization

So Ireland has been focusing on decentralization in the Republic of Ireland.

My cousin is an architect and she works for the government of Ireland. Her and a few others actually designed the building below which is located in Trim, about an hour out of Dublin. It is the new Office of Public Works headquarters.

http://www.decentralisation.gov.ie/index.html

The Department of Finance's Central Decentralisation Unit regularly provide updates and material in relation to progress on the Decentralisation Programme on this site. Further information can also be found on the websites of each of the individual decentralising organisations.
The Government's current Public Service Decentralisation Programme will involve the transfer of Civil Service offices, State Agencies and complete Departments to provincial locations.

http://www.opw.ie/en/

The OPW headquarters building will cater for a working population of 366 and include public areas including an exhibition space; archive storage and library; canteen and all support functions and infrastructure. A separate carpark building located south of the headquarters building is proposed and will accommodate carparking, bicycle parking and waste management services. The visual impact of this building has been reduced through the use of extensive planting features integrated into the cladding and roofing of the building. It will also have timber and copper cladding features.
The objective of a low energy sustainable building required the cooperation of all design disciplines. Daylighting and natural ventilation strategies for the building were resolved in detail to ensure that the work environment and level of comfort will be within best practice. A natural ventilation strategy for the building has been developed which incorporates night cooling of exposed thermal mass ceilings and automatic opening vents. The final testing demonstrated that the building's performance against a modern comparable national office type resulted in an energy conservation of 50%.

Yes... she is very talented!!!!!!!!!