Wolfe tone park
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This appears to be close to completion
having seen the competition winning scheme at the time, it is a major disappointment to see that the large inclined earth bank has been completely removed and instead we have a flat “lawn” with the recovered gravestones placed within it.
has the feel of yet another windswept open space/skate parkIt has already been taken over by the skateboarders. I think the headstones in the lawn looks rather naff.
I personallly think its great that the skaters are there giving vibrance to the place I’m sure peter coady thought it would be used by them and too as well as the prams,parents and pensioners.pity that the council were too cheap to build it as designed though I just hope they dont come along and take notches out of all the concrete benches now to stop the skaters.
a park should be for everyone, and everone should have a place in society, but to be fair, the presence of ‘scaters’ and ‘goths’ is very offputting for a large majority of people. has anybody been around curved street at night lately?
No fergus, they will not need to, you can already see from the Jervis the blocks that are damaged by the skaters witjh the edges all lopped off, and marked. Personally I’d run over a skateboarder on my bike given the chance.
A point about skaters…… the sculpture at Wood Quay suffered the same fate too ….it’s base all chipped and broken. Maybe an outdoor skating-drome could be built in a secluded part of the inner city….I say ‘secluded’ when you consider that they built a handball alley beside one of the city’s main courthouses in Green Street ….how naff.
I have to agree with Jas and gregf
its just vandalism. I cant imagine many pensioners or people with prams being inclined to use the park as it is, if there are skaters about.
maybe the previous park wasn’t so bad after all!!!And they still lock up that handball alley so that no-one can use it !
I actually think that the opposite might be the true solution ….. provide for and encourage these things in the most public of places so that their use is encouraged and forms a means of entertainment for passers by.
Imagine a rollerblading competition or game of basketball or whatever being held somewhere like wolfe tone park on a sunny
afternoon… the huge crowd that would gather around such an event…..
then you’d have a demand for ice-cream/hot-dog stalls etc etc a positive atmosphere can only but prevail.
If these things are provided in so called seccluded areas (as per usual) then they wont gather crowds, only smaller groups of people carrying out truly unsociable activities….
Maybe we need to re-evaluate what is UNSOCIABLE activity is in the first place.At what point does a few people just having positive and harmless fun turn into socially unacceptable negative behaviour ?
As for everything else in the universe ……it depends on the CONTEXT[This message has been edited by quirkey (edited 15 November 2001).]
I think it looks pleasant – I think given that it is a small space, in a heavily urbanised area – there is a need for quite a bit of paving. A lot of grass wouldnt work well in a location like this. It looks contemporary and is open (ie no railings locking it away). Also I dont think the presence of skateboarders is necessarily a bad thing. Diversity is what makes a city interesting.
I’m sorry LOB and whoever I think that blaming skaters is not exactly positive the park is intended for everyone but to be honnest the presence of skaters I see as positive its an outdoor sport in which people who participate are constantly questioning their surruonds and looking at it in a different way to most but the point is they are looking more than most.I also think a create a vibrancy in the area I don’t think the intention is to scare people or annoy or vandalise the structures in fact it would be better for the skaters if the seat edges remained pristine and it is a pitty that they are getting dammaged but is it maybe just al lack of foresight that it would be used in this way and would get worn in this way-I think this anti-skaters or goths or energetic people in wheelchairs or whoever or whatever attitude is a little shortsighted and not exactly the kind of linear thinking about the problem I see as never creating a better place.
[This message has been edited by fergus (edited 16 November 2001).]
In fairness any idiot could see this space being taken over by the skateboarders. It looks like it was designed for them, but they will intimidate other people away. The same way that people now avoid the Curved Street if they can to avoid the teenage goths and their tshirts commemorating Cobain (who was probably dead when they were 2)
It may be traditional but the best thing for a park is grass… it regenerates itself and will never look as bad as cheap granite slabs covered in black chewing gum stains.
surely if a public space is being designed which may attract skaters yhen the materials and design of the elements should be resistant to whatever it is subjected to- for example providing steel copings on granite blocks, good for wear and good for skateboarding.
The designer has as much responsibility for the markings as the skateboarders- they should predict and avoid the wear and tear associated with normal city life, which includes skateboarding, like it or not. architects seem to get very pissed off when someone uses THEIR building for a use which they haven’t foreseen, or just didn’t bother considering when designing it- in the case of a public space, the skateboarders have as much right to use it as the pram pusher or granny.by extension
would someone who was shopping in the Jervis centre have the right to park their car there?
By the logic expressed above-they have as much right to use the space as anyone else
It is a matter of what is acceptable-In my opinion, due to damage caused by it,scateboarding is not.
You may ask the question, should the corporation provide a venue for skateboarders? But it could be argued that it has greater priorities like regenerating the city centre.On rather a tangent, I was under the impression that Coady Architects had surrenderd responsibility for executing the project to the OPW- in which case it is no surprise that the more sutble aspects of the design (like the slope,which I would have thought was intrinsic to its faithful completion) have been ommitted. Perhaps for cost reasons?
I see skating,cycling people on pogo-sticks whatever as a positive thing-people outside enjoying and using the place they live in a positive way.I’d be more concerned about a place that is “Safe” but boring such as the park behind the civic offices or that it could become full of junkies or whatever-the only place I’ve ever seen a junkie actually shooting up was under the stairs on the way into the ifc off the meeting house square but then again that too has skaters in it sometimes but not when its busy and I think the same could well happen in wolftone pk.as well -if people are sitting on the seats and milling around all over the place then it is probable that it won’t be used for skating except at night or when its quiet,and as for the dammage wel I personally think it should have been foreseen that this would happen and anyway if the edges do crumble then the seats won’t be any use to the skaters anymore anyway.But on the point of a skatepark being a waste of money and the corpo having “greater priorities such as regenerating the city centre” well then if they did build a skate-park wouldn’t that get rid of all the things that get under the skin of so many contribuiters here about parts of the city centre at the moment,immagine-curved streetfree of teenie-goths (well at least when ever there would be nothing going on in the temple bar music centre) no skaters to be seen except at the skate park in fact probably less strange looking people and all those non-conformists who “litter” our streets with diversity instead we could build a big skate park somewhere people would never go and lock em all up there -the odd time passing to knock some of them down on our bikes!
[This message has been edited by fergus (edited 20 November 2001).]
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