college green/ o’connell street plaza and pedestrians

I see lots of signage poles being erected today adding the visual clutter. Well done to all who contacted various persons in DCC. Not that it helped in the least.

On the plus side however movement around College Green seems a whole lot easier and I imagine this is especially do for wheelchair users with broad dishing and flush paving.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0727/1224251384735.html

To mark the opening of Bus Gate today, let us remind ourselves of the spectacular botchwork at Dublin’s foremost architectural ensemble again.

It’s been in the paper twice. The elected councillors have been filled in. An Taisce and the Irish Georgian Society have both lodged complaints to DCC about it, copying to various sections (conservation, heritage, architects and engineers), and now the Dublin Civic Trust have put their oar in. But still no backdown from DCC, from their spokesman on the Last Word today when it was put to him. He glossed over with some ‘requirement of integration’ guff.

During work. That Sierra crowd who did the work are brutes …. jack of all trades and master of none …
(But of course the blame for the whole horror lies firmly with DCC.)

During work.

The finished job; white granite added in to the historic yellow pavement and a big awkward red-tile platform.

New white granite casually thrown in in front of one of the most important 18th century classical buildings in Europe. I didn’t think it was possible to be shocked anymore …

And cement strap-pointed.

While the red studded-tile platforms at the road crossings at Trinity and the BOI were there in some form previously – I think they’ve just been enlarged (and renewed) – the ones here at the entrance & exit to the BOI forecourt are ‘virgin’, and the justification for them is frankly ludicrous: the BOI forecourt has parking space for a handful of vehicles and is only open during banking hours Mon-Fri; the small number of vehicle movements thus generated puts the onus for caution moving in and out of the forecourt firmly on the vehicle. But instead irreplaceable old granite has been cut out and unecessary studded tiles put in at an angle. Words fail me ..

Also, note that insertion of crossing-point tiles in this location was NOT indicated on the proposed Bus Gate map plan, as originally linked by missarchi:
http://www.dublincity.ie/RoadsandTraffic/QBNProjectOffice/QBN/Documents/T-QBN-127-DSL-001.pdf

The National Council for the Blind insist on these platforms at every crossing. The solution, from a conservation perspective, is use of steel studs (like has been used in some locations in the context of the modern paving scheme on O’Connelll Street), though this is apparently not acceptable to them. They want red tiles or nothing.

The red is bad and the yellow and the L shape?…
why don’t we build a monorail for them?
How is the world heritage list going or removal of national primary?

– If they where so worried about this place the speed limit would 5km/hr
– There would be invisible speed cameras and a 100 euro fine if your doing 10km/hr
– There would only be one lane with sensitive bollards that if you hit them you get a fine

Anyway all will be revealed in the line BXD application…
There will be a plan a I hope…

This is what represents bad planning in Ireland…
If this was fixed 30 years ago maybe there would have never been sprawl…
It’s snakes and ladders all the progress means nothing if you cannot fix the centro heart.

Full of quick fix’s let’s hope the master plan is all that it is cracked up to be or history will repeat itself.

Not to mention the proliferation of signage! There are poles and signs everywhere.
Also:
The vista towards the HoL entrance and Moore statue from College Street is blocked by an LED display.
The view of Gratton and his lamps – shared with an LED display and signage
Inappropriate industrial park type lighting on the existing light poles (already ugly enough).
The sop of a heritage lamp in the centre median is an insult frankly.

One instance where the application of an angle grinder is more than merited on College Green!

Spot on Devin and Stephen with your assessments. It’s been a total mess. One of the newest delights is just around the corner on College Street, where crisp new slabs of quite attractive modern granite have been laid (though in place of historic granite from what I recall). The surface-applied strap pointing on what are machine-precisioned slabs just has to be seen to be believed. It actually looks like a send-up of contractors’ worst practices. Shocking workmanship, at public expense.

But clutter is the real big issue. It’s a scandal.

As an aside, watching the bus gate in operation yesterday, at least 80 per cent of drivers entering and then being directed out of College Green were women, quelle surprise 😉

The butchery of College Green proves beyond any doubt that Dublin City Council have as much vision as a myopic bat in a fog.

@fergalr wrote:

The pedant in me wants to point out that bats are almost blind 😛 But I agree with what you’re saying. I think the problem is that very few councillors represent the city centre as a ward. Try to build someting in Dublin SE? Good luck. That place is almost UNESCO. But tamper with one of the single most important architectural set pieces in the country? Go right ahead. Sure they’re only pavements. And trees are good for the environment. Call it Laceyism, for want of a better term.

The pedant in me shall point out that bats have good eyesight, on a par with humans and actually better in low levels of light. However, if the bat in question was shortsighted the fact that he would get about in fog (or any other climatic conditions) using sonar rather than sight would render their myopia as inconsequential to navigating.

(Friday fact for ya 😉

bats are freaky they like dry cat food too and they drag themselves along the ground if they are on smooth tiles. Black European pigs have to be the best looking in the world…

i’m still waiting for humps and bollocks (bollards) gehl had a page in the north wall site that had limits…

Precisely Frank. One of a number of papers on the matter. Frankly, this is a non-issue. It’s been resolved elsewhere; there’s no reason to reinvent the wheel or start getting hackles up at this stage in the game. The solutions are old news and should be standard procedure across the board.

In any event, the area outside the Bank of Ireland is not even a crossing point – it’s a pavement intersected by two minor driveways where the pedestrian has right of way. Equally, one cannot imagine a greater change in texture and contrast that a sharp transition from smooth granite to staggered, broadly spaced setts.