bewhelan
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Thanks bluefoam, your lighthearted approach gets the point across much better, glad to see i am not alone in my thoughts. It will be interesting to see what is actually done about the problem.
I think you are missing my point…just because most people do not respond to the invitation does not mean the invitation does not exist. Yes all low level structures can be climbed but to quote bluefoam the structure does yell ‘climb me’ ,whereas not all low level structures do.
To provide a comparison to explain my point, if a bus shelter is made from wood, people are more likely to write on it than if it is made of glass, though both materials can in fact be written on(this has been proven from studies in the UK). The properties of an object affect how we react to it and in my opinion the design of the bridge does have something about it that suggests climbing. If this is not the case then why are the children climbing it instead of all the other bridge railings on the Liffey?I know that MOST people would not dream of climbing the bridge. Most people are not climbing it, just a few kids, but that is all it takes to cause problems. The point is that the form the bridge takes does invite and accomodate climbing. MOST people resist this invitation as they care for their personal safety, because of social decorum or because they have better things to do but children often have none of these things. I am not condoning the actions of the children, just saying that a little further thought might have prevented the problem.
When i saw a kid climbing the bridge, the first thing i thought is that the architect forgot a common principle often employed by web and interface designers, that of “affordance”. Certain objects “afford” certain actions and communicate these actions by their appearance. Yes it is true that all the bridges on the Liffey have railings that could be walked on, but the new bridge is designed so that its railings afford or invite walking/ climbing. A simple change in design like simply making the first 4ft of the railing at each end much narrower than it presently is would make climbing on it much less inviting and with good visual design employed would not really harm the look of the bridge. What has happened is just so typical, a design that does not consider actual human use. Anyone could see a mile off this would happen.
