Grafton Street, Dublin

Maybe this is for the best. Grafton Street will never be what they want it to be, as it’s already just an average British high street and there’s no will to change it. They should just pick another street nearby and design it from scratch.

Its progressing. Maybe faster than thought? It surely wont take 18mths?

Did I hear somewhere that the stone is sources from Leinster and Portugal

Actually I would say its all to do with phasing. Create the central walkway first and then you can work on the sides thereby limiting the disturbance to businesses and pedestrians.

“Stains are more noticeable because of the recent very dry weather and the lack of rainfall, which in normal circumstances would wash away much of the staining.” – DCC

That is a Hartecast product. They supply the bins that are loved so much on this forum. His products are all terribly designed. Very frustrating as it’s an Irish company and their products are all over the country. Pity they can’t get a decent designer to design their products

Absolutely hideous. Have a look at hartecast dot com to see the rest of their grotesque designs. There’s even a testimonial from DCC.

“It says a lot for the quality and durability of your product that the bin itself was still in perfect working order after it had been badly knocked over by a truck, we removed the concrete from the base of the bin and it was used again!”

:sick:

Clearly the design is a contemporary take on Finn McCool’s cudgel.

If they unscrew, which I imagine they must, we may get to see how they perform in action, when the pubs close.

Good lord…well where to start.

Firstly the blurb from Hartecaste’s own website:

Following the success of our Ductile Iron Litter Bin range the new Base Ball Bat Bollard range is of the same strength and is a great addition to our already popular range. It is a seriously heavy duty bollard which is available with contrasting colour strip for higher visibility. – See more at: http://www.hartecast.com/hc2100-base-ball-bat-bollard/#sthash.43jTCM40.dpuf

So there you have…gunter was not far off the mark.

At the time of the Part VIII application, a number of people, myself included took the time to comment on the Council’s plans. The design of street furniture was left deliberately vague but the Part VIII application documentation did includes such standards phrases as…

It is proposed that the street furniture be well-designed and elegant, and both reflect and express the unique character of Grafton Street.

A planning authority of course never really needs to justify its proposals under Part VIII. In my experience the public is usually ignored …unless they are in wheelchairs or run a charity shop or some other such trait that the media are likely to attach themselves to. Crap design is not something even the Irish Times can engage with.

So it was in this instance. The few calls that were made to retain the existing lamps etc were roundly ignored. ‘Contemporary’ rules the day. But this is not the contemporary of Beth Gali, its rather Bollards ‘R’ Us.

I got a recent reply via Twitter that the old lamps were being reclaimed by the Public Lighting Dept (bastion of style elegance and conservation that it is) for use elsewhere in the city.

I suppose its a fair point to say that the city is not a museum piece and that it should not be a simple case of old vs new, olde worlde vs cool Hibernia. But in this instance is very much lowest common denominator stuff. Given that city architect Killian Skay (oops dont mention their names) spent about 2 years on the design of this street…something more than a browse through the Hartecaste catalogue would have been expected.