UCD College of Engineering & Architecture

Resources

Richview Campus

Richview is a satellite campus, located to the west of the main campus, Belfield and is a collection of schools, resources and activities, offering a complete campus in itself. Originally an estate house, it was built in 1790 by the Powell Family. In 1885 it was bought by the Masonic Order and turned into a school with an extension soon added and designed by Sir Thomas Drew. It was bought by UCD ( 1974 - when?) and annexed it to the main Belfield campus.

Richview Library

The Richview Library, a branch of the main UCD library, is a unique and valuable collection of material covering architecture, planning, geography and others and includes printed media and digital formats. It is a unique collection in UCD and on the island of Ireland and is used by many from around the University. It is an integral part of the education of architects in UCD. For more information...

Building Lab

The Building Laboratory is a large workshop space which serves various functions for the school.

During the first 3 years of study, students are required to attend a series of trainings and demonstrations in the Lab. These sessions include trainings in safe use of tools and machinery, simple joinery, brickwork and plaster-casting. Demonstrations include introductions to building components as well as in-depth building trade demonstrations carried out by our technicial staff and by the construction industry.

The Lab is an excellent model-making facility, laid out with numerous work benches, with generous space for creative endeavours. It contains a good array of woodworking machinery as well as various small power tools and hand tools. A laser cutter is available for intricate detailing, and for upper-year students a CNC router is available. Group projects as well as individual projects are carried out by students of all years, and sometimes these involve 1:1 scale constructions.

The Building Lab is also a key resource for supporting Academic research projects. In the past these have included experiments with timber and concrete, and the construction of one off pieces of equipment.

Technical support is provided by the Laboratory Manager, Michael Murphy and also by part-time lab interns.

Built Environment Lab

The Built Environment Laboratory (BEL) is a shared resource in Richview and is a facility within the UCD Earth Institute (link). It is a unique resource in Ireland which provides state-of-the-art equipment and facilities, supported by technical expertise. It provides facilities for modelling (both physical and computational), measuring and field monitoring. Research themes supported include energy and environment, indoor environmental quality, daylight and solar, natural ventilation, building thermal performance, urban climatology and renewable energies. The major components of BEL include:

Hemispherical Artificial Sky: allows researchers and designers to simulate daylight conditions within and around buildings, using scale models. The sky can reproduce a full range of Commission Internationale de L'Eclairage (CIE) standard overcast, intermediate and clear skies with an integrated heliodon. Supported using luminance, illuminance, photographic and radiometric metering and equipment.

Thermography: thermographic analysis of buildings and their components by means of studying thermal performance, energy efficiency, construction quality, thermal bridging and moisture detection amongst others. It uses a digital thermographic camera to provide detailed real-time analysis.

Ventilation, Indoor Air Quality and Thermal Comfort: a range of instrumentation and data logging equipment is available for measurement and analysis of several parameters including building air-tightness, air change rates, air quality characteristics and airborne particles.

Climate Monitoring: a wide range of instrumentation is available for the measurement and analysis of both indoor and outdoor environments. Specific configurations can be arranged to support a widely varying range of research applications.

School Shop