Christmas Lights!
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Just to echo The praise for DCC`s Parks Dept.
This section of DCC is Head and Shoulders above any other department and consistently does the City Proud in its Field (!!)
Given that it is usually well down the list of runners and riders in the funding stakes it really does make it`s budget stretch a long way.
Well done to the Parks Dept !!!! 😀Christmas 2007
So another year has passed, and time once again for the annual wander around the winter wonderland *cough* that is Dublin city centre at Christmas. As already mentioned a few weeks ago, the big news this year is Grafton Street’s spectacular new lighting scheme. North Earl Street traders have also invested to elegant effect.
Grafton Street
Central Bank, Dame Street
Q Bar, Burgh Quay
General Post Office, O’Connell Street
Jervis Shopping Centre, Mary Street/Jervis Street
Messrs Maguire, Burgh Quay
Royal College of Physicians of Ireland, Kildare Street
North Earl Street. Stunning new lighting this year – excellent choice.
Citi Bar, Dame Street
Brown Thomas, Grafton Street
Habitat, College Green. Half-hearted…
North Great George’s Street. After last year’s funding fiasco, a decent, whimsical investment was made this year.
Plaza, O’Connell Street
Bank of Ireland, College Green
Happy Christmas everyone!
A typically prosaic civil servant approach alright 😀
Ah the ropelights are kinda cool though when you see the full pair of trees. ‘Different’.Just a couple of stickies regarding Grafton Street. While the new scheme is very impressive – apparently by a French lighting company – and the concept an excellent one, in execution it is somewhat clunky.
As a collective, the scheme works very well, but individually the suspensions are rather cumbersome and lacking in the finesse one would expect of such a professional arrangement. The reality of industrial tubular panels covered in a mesh of lights is very apparent, not least as they relate poorly at the join to their host buildings, and especially to the chandeliers in the centre. The latter in particular ought to have been better resolved – perhaps having the panels rising above and across the chandelier and have it suspended from that. As is, the panels – also often at rather skewed angles – are just too mechanically ‘obvious’.
Also such a shame that the chandeliers are so stunningly beautiful yet farcially finished off with cartoon-like plastic candles of ridculous proportion and illumination.
For an enormously expensive scheme of such pretension and ambition, it’s really quite shocking that this detail was allowed through the net (pun unintended). There is little question that these could and should have been better designed. Especially given the decorations as a whole look quite appalling during the day – of course that’s the nature of modern decorative lighting – but decent candles would at least give better form to the units during daylight hours. The gold baubles are a lovely touch.
But overall, an exceptional investment. It’s a scheme of international standard (not sure if that’s necessarily a good thing!), that does justice to such a massively trafficked thoroughfare. Impressive the DCBA went to such lengths to bring something decent back home, so top marks on that front.
Some pics to follow of the white elephant that is Docklands at Christmas btw 😉
Great work again, Graham.
One quick correction: It’s South Great George’s Street rather than North GGS.
@StephenC wrote:
Take a look at the O’Connell Street tree though! It practically dead already
It was hit by a truck not long after being put up though, wasn’t it?
Not sure how much of an effect it had, but i’m guessing ‘some’I’m delighted with the effort put in this year… though the collective climaxing over the lights on Grafton st caught me a little by suprise. It’s nice. I know it’s by the people who light the Eiffel Tower but the similarities end there! (btw, when are they lighting the Poolbeg Chimneys).
Personally, I think Henry St, North Earl St, Talbot St has the southside licked. Less garish and more classy than the electric boudoir of our main shopping thoroughfare :p And Johnson’s Court wins hands down. It’s so cozy to have the strings of simple lights just a few feet above the head. I love taking shortcuts that way to the DART nowadays.
Oh, and as a recent patron of Messrs… it’s as nice inside with those lights.But where are the christmas lights on the cranes this year? Is it just me or are there less?
Not wishing to Bah Humbug to excess,I must pose the question,why has DCC decided to cast Nassau St into a cavern of blackness…?
The stretch between Grafton and Dawson Street has been sans lumiere for some months now which effectively imposes a blackout after the shops close….this is in addition to the very poor general level of public lighting along Nassau St proper which depends totally on units placed high along the building side only…..:confused:
Very true Alek, as with Westmoreland Street, Kildare Street and various other parts of the city centre. At least we’re compensating for some of the, um, excesses below…
A few more twinkly pictures of the city at night. Have to say I find it faintly obscene that entire stretches of the city centre are devoid of Christmas lighting – and those parts that are, relatively few being of a decent quality – whilst the Docklands is burning away tens of thousands of euro, not to mention kilowatts of electricity, for the sake of an as yet handful of residents and passers-by. Nonetheless, these lights have set a new standard for festive lighting in Ireland, and are a welcome development.
Why O’Connell Street, even just the Plaza, is not of this quality is utterly beyond me.Grand Canal Dock
Great views from Alto Vetro.
Grand Canal Dock from Pearse Street
Grand Canal Dock
Office Building, Sir John Rogerson’s Quay
Custom House from Sir John Rogerson’s Quay
City Quay
Church of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, City Quay
Dublin Castle
Great photos Graham, cheers
I suspect some of the Corporates down in Grand Canal Dock may have contributed towards the lighting either directly or indirectly. City quay looks excellent, I can see it from the office canteen, many others in the company I work for have commented likewise.
@THE_Chris wrote:
I think Dublin Castle needs a fuller tree, that one looks bare at the top 😀
Probably because the Castle’s most famous current patron has been climbing up and down it so much in recent times:)
Quality Images from GrahamH.
I would concur that the cost/benefit of the “Docklands” lighting is open to scrutiny,however it would require several sets of Fingerless Gloves and a Top Hat along with a big bag of Bah Humbug`s to do this attitude justice. Full Marks to all those who devised and installed the lighting 🙂
However,what concerns me still about the greater Docklands scheme is the all to visible stalling of the Irish property and development sector in general.
My great fear is that when the current tranche of office AND resedential development finishes we will see it lying fallow for the want of interested parties with enough stimulus to actually purchase/rent units in it.
If the current stuff does not shift,then many developers could start measuring the length of their fingers as they look for the longest one on which to place future development plans.
As I see it Dublin City Council and the Docklands Development Authority really do need to look at a re-launch of the original Concept for the area as I sense quite a decrease in its profile and desirability in the Greater Dublin Context..in a nutshell it`s beginning to look horribly low-rent in many area`s where the exact opposite picture is required 🙁
I feel it nearing make or break time for the Docklands concept,lets just hope we have somebody who does “Concepts” on board these days ?? :confused:
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