New Urbanism.

Another point worth making, is about the ‘band of concerned aesthetic police’ that boards like Archiseek and articles by Frank tend to facilitate.

This thread proves me point

As if the designer/engineer in any of these cases could have done much to address the larger problem of how urban space/environments and factory zones are laid out. They aren’t ugly buildings, they are perhaps better qualified as low density forms of development.

Take that whole area around the fruit/veg markets – what do you have, an area that shuts down everynight – the old Smithfield, Arran Quay upper/lower, Broadstone and the old N. King St. Church street. Some pretty dead areas in an inner city I think anyone will agree.

I mean, gradually over a long period, I guess people just stopped walking anywhere near/around that fruit/veg market area and it and its surroundings became dilappidated. I would argue the same of Moore St. Contrary to popular culture – Moore Street makes pedestrian avoid that area completely – the dirt, stink, noise, mess and hassle of going anywhere near there is just too off-putting. Result, total disuse and dilapidation of the surrounding area – Parnell St, O’Connell St, Illac centre etc. Camden St, same – street is a mess and the presence of that market created a small pocket where noone really went if they could help it. Thomas St market and surrounding market streets – similar – an area of too-quiet, dead sort of closed down shops and dodgy pubs after trading hours.

I don’t care how much colour markets have, I don’t care how much ‘street activity’ selling bulk loads of toilet rolls generates – you have to look at other cities like Barcelona and french/english cities where the markets were somewhat better integrated and tidied up. The markets in Dublin despite all their RTE celebrity are stinking holes.

I mean, those two or three flower sellling places on Grafton Street make me sick – they deliberately shove you into a space about 2 feet wide, covering the entrances to two useful pedestrian side streets from Grafton street, just so they can sell their stinking ould flowers to fat-cat housewifes. They should be fecked off the street and allow the streets off Grafton to flow and function to relieve pedestrian congestion. It is a disgrace. You will notice those streets off Grafton St, have never really developed, as a result of flower sellers blocking it up.

You talk about pedestrian movement and transit, we have to stop being overly naive about street sellers in this city and basically stop them taking over pedestrian routes, just so they can turn over a profit – without paying a cent in rent. They have been overly sentimentalised in popular culture in Dublin – pulling out this molley malone nostalgia thing. I think part of Baggot St has this problem too.

I think that unless planners begin to understand how to contextualise the huge numbers of people that move around every working day; it will only deteriorate further. Although I doubt stampedes will occur
simply billions lost in productivity

I mean, the purpose of pedestrian ways or traffic is that – to accomodate efficient and enjoyable, if possible, motion of human bodies without the need for an internal combustion engine involves – obescity etc, etc. Not so that every lunch going office suit in Dublin, has to trip over f*** flower pots every lunch hour of their lifes. I think it would be very possible to use computer simulation to study the effect of those unscrupulous, dis-graceful flower re-sellers on Grafton st. Leave blocking off Streets to the Gardai people.

We as architects have been very naive too, in not integrating the subject of human bodily movement into the curriculums in architectural colleges. People like Le Corbusier, Holl, Koolhaas have totally built their designs around the needs of human beings for movment on foot. The street traders of Dublin city are not as naive, and if any city is an example of naivity towards street traders, it is Dublin. How long does it take one to get from one end of O’Connell St to the other? Given the amount of rubbish and flower stands you have to negotiate? I mean, O’Connell St, should be a clean slate from top to bottom – I fear the new ‘monument’ spire is just yet another example of ‘this cluttering mentality’ the is integrated into much of Dublin’s ideas about space, and its use pedestrian by pedestrians.

I constantly reference the millenium wing of the National Gallery, it is for all intents and purpose like a stepped streets with various levels, but no god damn street traders with their pots of flower choking up all the ped movement – No, doubt given half a chance you might find some trader in their blocking most of the width of the atrium and yelling ‘flowers for sale’.

How about a contra-flow bicycle lane in Nassau Street? And getting those few car parking spaces all along Nassau st, into the Setanta centre or someplace underground even. Or would that be too much like doing something right in Dublin city centre. They are always selling flowers on Fade St, too and that is just beside the George’s arcade where they could and should be accomodate – allowing Fade st, to become usable and a better st.

I was cycling along Portobello last sunday evening and was asked by a Guard not to cycle up there – having done so like everyone else for years and years. This is the kind of ‘patrolling’ and flow control we have now aspired to under the Bertie administration. I just think, this notion of pedestrian movment and getting out of the ‘studio ivory tower’ in architectural college needs to be considered. I mean, getting the feeling of walking around something one might design as a young arch student. The final Chapter is Ching, isn’t bad on this actually.

Someone should do a Cartoon of a Rubgy player like Jono Lomo negotiating a LUAS tram, a Dublin Bus and a motorcar only to trip over a flower pot! 🙂 And have some flower seller saying, are you going to pay for that! [angry]

Originally posted by Diaspora
You don’t need a contra flow up Nassau St it only has to go down Sth Leinster st to Kildare st as a right turn is permitted down molesworth St coming back out at Davy/Hibernian way on Dawson St giving access back to Nassau St but also back towards the Westbury and Grafton st as well. Therbye breaking up the oneway system and allowing preferential treatment for those who provide their own congestion freindly transport.

I can see how that would be infinitely easier to achieve, avoid the problems of bicycles running it ‘right turning cars’ going up Kildare St, and still as a solution, like you have proposed would still manage at least 50% of the improvement, that a total bicycle lane, the full length as I have suggested would achieve.

Don’t get me wrong though, the footpath for pedestrians directly in front of Reads and Easons, formerly Fred Hannas, is a mess from a pedestrian point of view – it is a choke point, and thereby has means that over the years, pedestrians have began to avoid it – it would even help enormously if Dublin City corp shelled out for some kind of ‘wall mounted’ parking metres, so as not to ‘wind’ oneself hopping off of parking metres, in a desperate attempt to ‘make some headway’ through the crowd – That one single pedestrian ‘black spot’ is solely responsible for the deterioration all along Nassau St – that toward Nassau St, Leinster St, etc, the Setanta Centre, all along towards Merrion Square has become rather disused and dodgy at nightime. People don’t know it, it is lost to the city. Despite having gone to all the trouble and expense of building a very fine new Art Gallery extension at the end of that route.

If the said pedestrian choke-point in front of Fred Hannas was fixed, somehow, that would greatly enhance possibilities for all Nassau St to become more than it is. All it would actually take in reality, is for a couple of rich dudes to have to walk a few hundred yards more to their own personal parking space in the underground Setanta centre or something. I mean, the situation is in Dublin, you need to get around on foot – so apart from providing multi storey car parking – it would also help conjestion considerably in Dublin city centre, if the people could walk around, do their business and generally not have to waste as much time as they do, getting stopped at pedestrian choke-points around the city centre. I would love to fly up in a helicopter some day, and watch all the sad, poor, fools having to que at certain points to walk around.

It goes right back to my old point, that we here in Ireland love sending out state paid ‘troppers’ in big, bright badged mechanised transport – Gardai uniforms in this case – to ‘solve’ the traffic problem. Over last xmas, I know from a lot of cases, that two and even three young inexperienced gardai were necessary to ‘make some traffic conjestion problems worse’ when only one could have managed to mess it up by themself. But perhaps if we invested less money in bright, shiny motorcycles and suits for cops, and tried to put a bit of money into relieving pedestrian choke points, things would ‘flow better’.

I mean, the street traders in Dubin city, who sell their bloody flowers to 5% of the total pedestrian street population, who are probably grannies moving at 0 miles per hour anyhow, have been allowed to create artificial pedestrian choke points all by themselves. If it was any other product other than flowers they were selling, they would be brought properly into line. Effectively they manage to ‘barricade’ South Annes St, and the other St, going up past McDaide’s pub – effectively creating a shop premises, free of rent where there should be a pedestrian street. But we here in Dublin have been incredibly naive about these things – pedestrianisation doesn’t equal sentimental, picturesqe, conjested clutter – it means, taking some of the benefits of pedestrianisation – the ability for large popultations of people to march around the place in quick time like armies.

Some day, I will start a riot with the Street traders in Grafton Street by doing a ‘Johnny Wilkinson special’ to one of those buckets of god-damn flowers, and driving it down as far as college green. In general I can see, you have taught about this subject in detail, and while I do have a lot of respect for someone who has done so – I feel compelled to point out some of the more obvious example of ‘pedestrian circulation’ naievity that are staring people blankly in the face as you ‘try to navigate your way on two tired old pins’ around our nation’s capital. I mean also, from the point of view, of running the nation’s capital – keeping the economy afloat, contributing to peoples’ reduction in stress levels, health probs etc, etc. A good example of changing the way, people use a space, in a positive fashion, is of course the Liffey Board walks. It is just a pity, they didn’t shell out and do the same on the other side too.

Careful, before we spoil what is really a strong argument, before it is even allowed to get ‘aired’ properly. Dispora was making some good points, in the flower sellers favour, which I liked a lot too – obviously based on knowledge and experience of high rent strategies of developers for shop space in Dubin city.

So let’s just turn this into a bit of fun shall we?

To be perfectly honest with you all, I couldn’t give a toss about flower sellers, or what pedestrian problems there are in Dublin city – as know one currently pays me money to worry about such matters. But that doesn’t discount the easy opportunity it presents to sharpen some of my instincts as an Architect, using Dublin city as my real test bed. That is where Dispora and me probably differ a great deal – he/she obviously has some vested interest, or more than passing interest in these things – a career of worrying about the environment – it isn’t my career yet.

A daft, left-of-brain idea that I have been working on goes something like this. (Think Parc De La Vilette) If DIT system of education here in Dublin were encouraged to be a lot more like the flower sellers – to pursue their customers, with their product – to put their ‘buckets of education’ out in the street as it were. Then if you take all the premises that DIT have around Dublin city, all the land that the state owns etc, etc, and take a product like fresh flowers – if the state was to provide some level of support to those flower sellers to sell their product.

DIT is scattered around the city in a million different ‘little buildings’ and you really don’t know what is what anymore. The flower sellers are blocking up our streets, and need a fixed low rent premises. Why not exchange roles a bit? I mean of course, is some kind of park de la Vilette Bernard Tschumi way, where you overlay a map of DIT premises of higer education and then the low-rent, sort of ‘permit-holding’ street traders around Dublin city – whose beautfiul product, flowers bring as much joy into peoples’ lives as education does. We might be able to strike a better balance between the two needs.

To be honest with you guys, whenever i was asked to do these ‘left-brain’ projects in college I shyed away terribly. But I find, that when I base my arguments, ideas and assumptions on real sort of architectural foundation principles – people circulation, light as an element of architecture, degrees of spatial enclosure, open public spaces and so forth – that sometimes some useful observations can be brought forward into the basic framework stage for a good ‘left-brain’ kind of project idea.

What I cannot understand personally is why someone would want to do ‘left-brain’ projects without basing the exercise upon the opportunity to really sharpen one’s own perception of very basic architectural problem solving skills and guiding principles. The last thing I want to do here is to insult any party, but using my knowledge of DIT as an organisation over the years, is just a way of learning, more about cities. A map of architects practices in dublin, would also reveal just as interesting a result, or observations. You could distinguish how one Architects wants the big Georgian building on Baggot St, while another wants a small discreet office development off Mount Pleasant Ave, in Rathmines. Similarly with solicitors, accountants etc, etc. Cities aren’t made up of buildings and streets – but of people and circulation systems – that is what I have learned from my many years of education in DIT college.

Now, what really bugs me, is people who use new 3DS VIZ technology, without using some guiding principles and vocabulary similar to that of architects. I don’t want to design a building on a computer using terms like ‘Polyline, extrusion, UVW map modifier, parametric cube object’. Because it is not architectural vocabulary, and cannot ultimately lead to any architecturally defined solution. But there again, DIT with all the investment it has put in, still probably haven’t some invested in anything other than a typical AutoCAD/VIZ geek teaching computers to architects, with no clearly defined ajenda on how to pull it back into design studio.

Pro-active learning. . . is something the planning profession has embraced … but given some luck, may some day trickle down into architectural education. A lot of this pro-active learning can be done on foot too – see Dubin city Council walking tours information on their web site for instance.

But an ideal exercise, which I can highly recommend to explore cities in a thorough organised fashion, is to split it up into areas, and locate all retail areas, the professionals, the entertainment etc, etc. Because generally speaking when you get a large mixed use master plan to do anyhow, you are going to be facing that problem. Not just drawing polylines in AutoCAD and extruding them to do a ‘scanline rendering’ in VIZ. (Insert AutoDesk jiggle)

There is just so much, real world, field-work that architects can do to teach themselves. The recent RIAI publication of housing in Dublin city isn’t a bad one either – because you can find most of those schemes in Dublin, in reality. The Milltown/Dartry Road in Dublin is very interesting I think, since it contains a LUAS intersection and many, many religious type properties becoming high-density residential etc.

Space is a quite fascinating study, but you have to ‘get out there’. It doesn’t come to you inside a studio, holed up in some nice ‘architectural college course’ somewhere. Online places like Archiseek exist, which provide the best point of contact between various people thinking about these matters and comparing observations.