street furniture

I don’t know about the Dublin Bus/Corpo dispute but does anyone know if Iarnród Éireann is in dispute with it’s passengers? What they pass off as shelters and seats is laughable (when it’s not raining). The new station at Grand Canal dock looks like something from post war Berlin. There is no shelter whatsoever from the elements and considering that the platform is raised several metres above sea/dock level they could at least have provided windbreaks. The other new station at Clontarf is the same. Completely exposed to the wind and rain. I think that the designs for these stations were in-house jobs and, that being case, there is no excuse as surely these people study other projects before starting new ones. Maybe I’m ranting but whenever I hear the words bus shelter I reach for the umbrella…

The new DART stations are attractive from a distance, the curve up to the overpass is elegant. Pity about the lack of shelter though, I agree.

Practical issues aside,

I think the design of the shelters at grand Canal Dock is very strange. The structure of the shelters is galvanised steel and quite stocky looking. The actual canopy on top appears to be this flimsy corrugated perspex stuff. To me the visual effect of this is the equivalent of using a JCB to lift a feather. Call me old fashioned but I like a logic in my structural expression and it really gets me.