Athy, Co Kildare · Culture & Heritage
Shackleton Museum Stair
A curved balustrade for a curved concrete stair — laser-scanned, digitally reconstructed and detailed to ≈7.5 tonnes for the Shackleton Museum.
The Shackleton Museum stair is the digital thread end to end: a curved reinforced-concrete stair was laser-scanned at high resolution, reconstructed digitally in Tekla, and used as the exact geometry against which a curved steel balustrade system — with a timber handrail interface — was detailed for fabrication.
Then the site did what sites do. The cast-in channels intended to carry the balustrade weren't present in the concrete as built. Rather than stall the programme, the fixing strategy was redesigned around what was actually there: angle cleats, site-welded strap connections and modified load-transfer details between balustrade sections.
The scan-led workflow is what made that adaptation fast — with the as-built geometry already captured digitally, the revised fixings could be modelled, checked and issued without a return to manual measurement.
Outcome
Accurate fit-up against complex curved geometry, a seamless timber handrail interface, and a stair that now stands as the museum's key interior feature.
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