RISE

RISE is the official name given to the public art sculpture located at Broadway Roundabout in Belfast, Northern Ireland. However, it has been given unofficial, colloquial titles such as the "Balls of the Falls", "the Testes on the Westes" and "the Westicles". These names have been derived by both the sculpture's location on Broadway Junction (located above the A12 Westlink and in close proximity to the Falls Road) and in reference to its shape made from two spherical, metal structures. The RISE sculpture was designed by Wolfgang Buttress and consists of a geodesic sphere suspended inside a larger, 30 m (98 ft) diameter sphere, standing at an overall height of 37.5 m (123 ft). Geodesic refers to the shortest path between two points on a curve so that in the case of the RISE sculpture, adjacent connections on each of the spheres are connected using straight bars, thereby minimising the distance between two points. At 30m wide and 37.5m tall, RISE is the biggest public art sculpture in Belfast. RISE was commissioned by Belfast City Council and built in 2011 as part of a multimillion-pound road improvement programme. It now sits atop of the A12 Westlink Underpass (a grade-separated junction) which, according to a 2009 Northern Ireland Assembly report, sees approximately 80,000 cars on average flow past it each day.