Wolfe tone park

It has already been taken over by the skateboarders. I think the headstones in the lawn looks rather naff.

I personallly think its great that the skaters are there giving vibrance to the place I’m sure peter coady thought it would be used by them and too as well as the prams,parents and pensioners.pity that the council were too cheap to build it as designed though I just hope they dont come along and take notches out of all the concrete benches now to stop the skaters.

a park should be for everyone, and everone should have a place in society, but to be fair, the presence of ‘scaters’ and ‘goths’ is very offputting for a large majority of people. has anybody been around curved street at night lately?

No fergus, they will not need to, you can already see from the Jervis the blocks that are damaged by the skaters witjh the edges all lopped off, and marked. Personally I’d run over a skateboarder on my bike given the chance.

A point about skaters…… the sculpture at Wood Quay suffered the same fate too ….it’s base all chipped and broken. Maybe an outdoor skating-drome could be built in a secluded part of the inner city….I say ‘secluded’ when you consider that they built a handball alley beside one of the city’s main courthouses in Green Street ….how naff.

And they still lock up that handball alley so that no-one can use it !

I actually think that the opposite might be the true solution ….. provide for and encourage these things in the most public of places so that their use is encouraged and forms a means of entertainment for passers by.
Imagine a rollerblading competition or game of basketball or whatever being held somewhere like wolfe tone park on a sunny
afternoon… the huge crowd that would gather around such an event…..
then you’d have a demand for ice-cream/hot-dog stalls etc etc a positive atmosphere can only but prevail.
If these things are provided in so called seccluded areas (as per usual) then they wont gather crowds, only smaller groups of people carrying out truly unsociable activities….
Maybe we need to re-evaluate what is UNSOCIABLE activity is in the first place.

At what point does a few people just having positive and harmless fun turn into socially unacceptable negative behaviour ?
As for everything else in the universe ……it depends on the CONTEXT

[This message has been edited by quirkey (edited 15 November 2001).]

Personally, I think this is just the most boring and bland park I’ve ever seen.

Yeah Its more like a market square than a park now with so much hard surfacing in place.

I think it looks pleasant – I think given that it is a small space, in a heavily urbanised area – there is a need for quite a bit of paving. A lot of grass wouldnt work well in a location like this. It looks contemporary and is open (ie no railings locking it away). Also I dont think the presence of skateboarders is necessarily a bad thing. Diversity is what makes a city interesting.

I’m sorry LOB and whoever I think that blaming skaters is not exactly positive the park is intended for everyone but to be honnest the presence of skaters I see as positive its an outdoor sport in which people who participate are constantly questioning their surruonds and looking at it in a different way to most but the point is they are looking more than most.I also think a create a vibrancy in the area I don’t think the intention is to scare people or annoy or vandalise the structures in fact it would be better for the skaters if the seat edges remained pristine and it is a pitty that they are getting dammaged but is it maybe just al lack of foresight that it would be used in this way and would get worn in this way-I think this anti-skaters or goths or energetic people in wheelchairs or whoever or whatever attitude is a little shortsighted and not exactly the kind of linear thinking about the problem I see as never creating a better place.

[This message has been edited by fergus (edited 16 November 2001).]

In fairness any idiot could see this space being taken over by the skateboarders. It looks like it was designed for them, but they will intimidate other people away. The same way that people now avoid the Curved Street if they can to avoid the teenage goths and their tshirts commemorating Cobain (who was probably dead when they were 2)

It may be traditional but the best thing for a park is grass… it regenerates itself and will never look as bad as cheap granite slabs covered in black chewing gum stains.

surely if a public space is being designed which may attract skaters yhen the materials and design of the elements should be resistant to whatever it is subjected to- for example providing steel copings on granite blocks, good for wear and good for skateboarding.
The designer has as much responsibility for the markings as the skateboarders- they should predict and avoid the wear and tear associated with normal city life, which includes skateboarding, like it or not. architects seem to get very pissed off when someone uses THEIR building for a use which they haven’t foreseen, or just didn’t bother considering when designing it- in the case of a public space, the skateboarders have as much right to use it as the pram pusher or granny.

here here !!!
Equality, democracy, etc thats just what a city and all socieies should be about !!

On rather a tangent, I was under the impression that Coady Architects had surrenderd responsibility for executing the project to the OPW- in which case it is no surprise that the more sutble aspects of the design (like the slope,which I would have thought was intrinsic to its faithful completion) have been ommitted. Perhaps for cost reasons?

I see skating,cycling people on pogo-sticks whatever as a positive thing-people outside enjoying and using the place they live in a positive way.I’d be more concerned about a place that is “Safe” but boring such as the park behind the civic offices or that it could become full of junkies or whatever-the only place I’ve ever seen a junkie actually shooting up was under the stairs on the way into the ifc off the meeting house square but then again that too has skaters in it sometimes but not when its busy and I think the same could well happen in wolftone pk.as well -if people are sitting on the seats and milling around all over the place then it is probable that it won’t be used for skating except at night or when its quiet,and as for the dammage wel I personally think it should have been foreseen that this would happen and anyway if the edges do crumble then the seats won’t be any use to the skaters anymore anyway.But on the point of a skatepark being a waste of money and the corpo having “greater priorities such as regenerating the city centre” well then if they did build a skate-park wouldn’t that get rid of all the things that get under the skin of so many contribuiters here about parts of the city centre at the moment,immagine-curved streetfree of teenie-goths (well at least when ever there would be nothing going on in the temple bar music centre) no skaters to be seen except at the skate park in fact probably less strange looking people and all those non-conformists who “litter” our streets with diversity instead we could build a big skate park somewhere people would never go and lock em all up there -the odd time passing to knock some of them down on our bikes!

[This message has been edited by fergus (edited 20 November 2001).]

knowing some of the people contributing to all these forums here i’ve come to notice of those few, the younger ones (particularly student members) somehow tend to have a more positive and open minded, maybe accepting veiw of a more diverse and interactive city / society.
Why is that ??

The big problem with giving permission for public spaces to be used for sports such as skateboarding is that the owner then assumes a level of responsibility for the safety of those users and having seen the skaters falling over the staps at the Central Bank as they practice new moves, i imagine the corporation would not be eager to to take on a potential liability nightmare like this.

LOB the “few” you talk about would probably be the predominant users of the park, so instead of sticking ones head in the sand would an intelligent designer not consider this and create a park which can be used by all! And how can you be for diversity when you want these skateboarders to be segregated to an isolated part of the inner city when they are real members of the community and therefore must be embraced? They exsist, deal with it. Also you mentioned that the regeneration of the city being a priority for the corp. is bringing new people to a formerly dead area not considered regeneration?

I think calling that park a dead area is wrong. Before the corpo closed it, it was always busy, people sitting around, and in the summers you couldnt see the grass for people.

Sorry LOB, I may have attacked you on Gregf’s wording but by suggesting that scateboarders should not be accomadated in any areas mentioned, which are inner city public spaces you seemed to me to be implying what Gregf implicitly stated, that scateboarders should be segregated, except you dont think the corpo should prioritise the building of spaces to segregate them in, So where do these scateboarders go?
I do agree there is damage done by scateboarders, my point was that if the designer was smart enough they would have forseen these activities and provided for them, even by intigrating the scateboarders activities into the programme. Therefore including them into the city and putting paid to Dublin corpo spending a few quid on building the supposed scatepark.
Fair enough too, Jervis park is quite busy on sunny days in summer, but they dont occur to often and it was totally dormant in winter as it was closed off and people could not penetrate it on their path, also their was very little paved areas, so for the other 9 months of the year it was too mucky to go into. Not to mention that it basically needed a huge upgrade as it looked very shabby if not dead, to me anyway.

I did state that facilities should be provided for skateboarders did I not …..It’s just not to have such juvenile facilities built in more established areas of the city….parks and playgounds are the most suitable places not prime streets and squares…..It’s common sense is it not.

There is a park in Bucharest, near the center, with a skate park. It was pretty nice, a lot of fun to walk past. They had a quarter pipe and a few ramps and some features made to look like normal park fixtures, benches and kerbs, only in steel instead of stone. There was a dj and about thirty of forty skate boarders, mostly late teens, some older. It was an interesting feature in the park, and like I say, fun to watch, mostly because skaters have an admirable habit of only trying tricks they can’t do, so they are forever falling off.

I guess the point was that it was a big park, there is a problem with small urban parks.

As a frequenter of Jervis shopping center, I’ve been a looking at Wolfe Tone Park for years, I got a say, it sucks presently!!.

There has been some discussion on this forum about Dublin City Council having an obsession with making everything look modern in style and design, from this Park to O’Connell St. Well while O’Connell St. may work out when it is all finished, this parks is an eyesore.

I think it should be looked upon as derelist and classified as high priority for a makeover, given it’s proximity to the cities main commercial shopping street and the new Luas line.

Now, the vision I have for it is a return to some classic town park design, not Dublin/Georgian style, but Spanish style. Most spanish style squares have railings but not the kind that close the park of in a bubble, but instead have low railings which divide pathways from the shrubbery. The parks have a strong social emphasis been both comfortablle places to sit while also designed for plesant to cross through, with the emphasis on Paving, shrubbery and symmetry, but sparse in grass.

The present park here should be ditched along with Ballymuns Pearse Tower.

Just a thought though…

I am also a fan of Plaza type parks and the American commercial meaning of the word Plaza annoys me.

A proper Spanish style plaza is surrounded by at least two if not four city streets is open by design but has certain boundaries as well to preserve some sense of order. This gives distinct areas to the space and provides for a little more sense of space for those using it as opposed to a yard type atmosphere.

I would really welcome some kind of contemporary water feature to give the park a focal point. A number of low chained rails and some grass behind the chains.

But on balance I would have to say that what was done here was a big improvement on the poorly maintained closed space with dodgy tar paths and poorly maintained lawns that went before.

Also the older of the two PMPA/AXA buildings looks great for its lick of paint.

Construction work at the Church appears to be active again, have there been any developments in the legal status I wonder?

The lawns are a state, they havent been the same since last years Fringe Festival when the Speilgeltent was put here. If they were better maintained then the park would look much better. The design is quite good and its appropriate to the size and area. The park is also quite well used which is a plus and something that no doubt will increase once the Church development is complete.

@Jas wrote:

No fergus, they will not need to, you can already see from the Jervis the blocks that are damaged by the skaters witjh the edges all lopped off, and marked. Personally I’d run over a skateboarder on my bike given the chance.

I know what you mean these skateboarders are sticking with a sport and doing something positive with themselves rather than hanging around there area causing trouble, doing/selling drugs and not really having anything to focus on. Instead there are so many youths spending there time and money on skateboarding/rollerblading, which is having a heavy impact on our soceity today. I know alot of people that have stuck to skateboarding who would have easily continued to go down the wrong path if they didnt. But they make the edge of the bench round so its really not worth it atal. Also many european citys especially barcelona generate a huge amount of money from skateboarding tourism which is probably why skateboarders are aloud in the squares in barcelona. The positives to skateboarders being in these public squares are worth some damages done to the bench if any.

Also please realise we are not remotely similar to goths in any way and dont like that false stereotype atal. And in no way are “non conformists”.

DOR: What you seem to be saying is that ‘if we hadn’t done skateboarding, we’d have done drugs’ – quite a statement and totally unprovable, not to say daft. As far as urban squares are concerned, skateboarders and cyclists are both the bane of Jo(e) Public.
You may have a problem, but you don’t solve it by wrecking the public realm.

hate this park… always reminds me of the scence in Schindlers list all the headstones pilled up.

Love it myself, the evergreen oaks are beautiful, bit of a pity just bland ol decidous trees planted in the revamp, love the feel of this square, the crushed gravel, the old brick walls, a rare mediteranean feel in Dublin.

@johnglas wrote:

DOR: What you seem to be saying is that ‘if we hadn’t done skateboarding, we’d have done drugs’ – quite a statement and totally unprovable, not to say daft. As far as urban squares are concerned, skateboarders and cyclists are both the bane of Jo(e) Public.
You may have a problem, but you don’t solve it by wrecking the public realm.

I think your comments about “skateboards or drugs” may be inappropriate.

You live in Glasgow, a town that has one of the highest HIV infection rates in Europe through drug use, second only to New York at one point and no doubt similar to Dublin’s at this stage.

Anything that keeps kids off drugs is to be lauded, although I admit its cold comfort when you see damage to public installations.

And of course its not just drugs that cause the problem as we saw in Drogheda over the weekend with the 17-year old stabbing people indescriminately in the street after being refused from a night club.

Now we see the three swimming pools being closed down – we may see an influx of skateboarders to all parts pretty soon.
Why aren’t we seeing some insulation company adopting each pool and showing how the heating bills could be kept down and running the facility for a year?
If we’re not pulling together we’ll all fall apart.

ONQ.

@JackHack wrote:

As a frequenter of Jervis shopping center, I’ve been a looking at Wolfe Tone Park for years, I got a say, it sucks presently!!.

There has been some discussion on this forum about Dublin City Council having an obsession with making everything look modern in style and design, from this Park to O’Connell St. Well while O’Connell St. may work out when it is all finished, this parks is an eyesore.

I think it should be looked upon as derelist and classified as high priority for a makeover, given it’s proximity to the cities main commercial shopping street and the new Luas line.

Now, the vision I have for it is a return to some classic town park design, not Dublin/Georgian style, but Spanish style. Most spanish style squares have railings but not the kind that close the park of in a bubble, but instead have low railings which divide pathways from the shrubbery. The parks have a strong social emphasis been both comfortablle places to sit while also designed for plesant to cross through, with the emphasis on Paving, shrubbery and symmetry, but sparse in grass.

The present park here should be ditched along with Ballymuns Pearse Tower.

Just a thought though…

Fantastic idea for a public square and it would add hugely to the visual amenity of the urban landscape.

I support rejection of sterile modernist boxes with their new beetling overhang look – what’s that trying to do – intimidate people? Sheesh!

Up the road from here on Parnell street the planner got such a fright when he saw the East end of the multicreen cinema site he requested the architect for the other end to revise the design after details had been approved, stating that he didn’t want to see any more Belfast Industrial in Dublin.

That’s why the shops on Ryder’s Row reflect a more traditional, classical approach.

FWIW

ONQ.

@onq wrote:

. . . I support rejection of sterile modernist boxes . . . . .

. . . . . a more traditional, classical approach.
ONQ.

Can ONQ be making an architectural comment . . . . after all this time?

. . . . and it reveals that ONQ and CK could actually get on very well 🙂

@gunter wrote:

Can ONQ be making an architectural comment . . . . after all this time?

. . . . and it reveals that ONQ and CK could actually get on very well 🙂

I hate dumb box architecture – satisfied?

(well, that’s not entirely true, there is some I actually like)

I’m just not prepared to be a member of some watered down pseud’s corner.

(now we’ll see the fur fly…)

ONQ.

@aj wrote:

always reminds me of the scence in Schindlers list all the headstones pilled up.

Agreed – also the way grave stones form a quasi pavement on the west side; is it because the slabs were belonging to Protestants? Should never ever have been allowed happen.

Re skate boarding, more facilities should be provided. We tolerate living in a city where authorities paid out of our taxes are too much full of a no-can-do mentality, when if it wre the private sector, the reverse can be true.

Merchants and businesses around here, and the city centre in general, are in favour of such facilities being provided for kids, provided they are properly planned.

Instead of which such facilities, that give youngsters other options than wasting their time getting stoned, are not provided – and instead of which 200 metres up from here, the Dept of Justice is trying to illegally develop a 15,000 sq ft probation facility for “persistent offenders” from the “greater Dublin area” (see thread in Dublin forum). I also note the announcement of closure of the swimming pool on nearby Seán MacDermot Street

So instead of sports facilities for kids, such as skate-boarding ramps, we get a no-can-do attitude from tossers paid for out of our taxes… Just remember the city manager is on €210k p.a. + bonuses & expenses, reflecting the telephone figure salaries that many of the senior execs are on – many of whom i.m.o. are out-of-touch with the needs of the real economy, unaccountable, and all too often incompetent.