stainless steel? really? yeah

What a delicious testimony to Dublin grime.

isnt it supposed to be ‘self cleaning’.

quite startling all right

If you’ve got a stainless steel fridge in your kitchen, you know that it quickly darkens, even if you keep it cleaned. Only way to restore the original brilliance is to treat it with something mildly abrasive. Which is easy with your fridge, not so easy with a 400 foot spike.

All architects must learn: stainless steel is never stainless for long.

Is it likely to just dull or color (i.e. a dirty brown)?

If this is the result of barely five months of exposure, the thing will be black within a few years! Self-cleaning my arse. Ritchie should be forced to pay for an annual spike-wash in perpetuity…

The plastic will be coming off the base today, I’m told.
They’ll be giving it a good old polish and then during the course of the week, cleaning the rest of it with a cherry picker.

Not really RSJ, depends on how you detail and specify

http://www.murraydunloparchitects.com/case_55blythswood.htm

Nice project, alan d. What’s your secret to keep the sparkle?

It’s a highly mirrored ugibrite finish on a plywood sub frame in a traditional long strip set out and detailed to avoid drip lines.

It’s a standard finish but never used by architects because it can be controversial in city centre locations. In Glasgow, the building is called the BacoFoil or KIT KAT building and weve had hate mail and abusive phone calls because of it.

But hey…………..

I had already posted in the “spike ” forum before I found this one about the stainless steel, so thanks to the miracle of “Copy & Paste”, I’ll add it in here, which maybe is the proper home for it……..

I went down over lunch to see the base of the spire , now that it has finally been unwrapped. It looks kinda strange, and was causing a lot of comment from passers-by.

There is a pattern on the lower section of the base rising up to about 6 metres or so. I remember reading that this was derived from the patterns of the soil in the test bores that were done at the start of the project. I have to say the pattern looks awful….. very nasty actually. It looks as though the wrapping got stuck to the surface and then pulled off the finish when it was being unwrapped. I know that this isn’t the case, as the matt finish is shot-peened, not applied as a film, but that is what it appears like, and now since lunchtime, I’ve received two calls from friends telling me to go down and take a look at what they assumed was the result of bad workmanship, or of leaving the wrapping on for too long.

The funny thing is that the surface of the patterned areas are left in their non-shot-peened state, i.e. very shiny and it gives a hint of what the spire may have looked like if it had been left with the stainless mirror finish that you usually expect with stainless steel. It reflects everything from the surrounds so you see distorted reflections of all the traffic and people moving across the surface, which looks great.

Can anyone recall if the shot-peened finish was mentioned at the beginning? and this pattern on the base? I only heard of it very late in the day, shortly before the first section arrived on site.

It would have been best if the base was left either with no pattern, or if one was desired, that it be a more linear, othogonal type of pattern, more in keeping with the feeling of the spire.
At the moment the pattern is too organic, and feels like a half-hearted gesture to “soften” the spire. I can’t think of anything less soft or organic than a sculpture in the form of steel spire set in an urban setting like O’Connell Street and think that should be celebrated rather than apologised for.

So in short are we going to be left with a big dirty black pole?