garethace

Public gatherings, isn’t there some strange law out there, that prevents people from gathering, due to causing riots or something.

The other thing, is that UCD was conceived at a time when student riots were big in this country.

In paris, marching and protesting still is a big part of the urban scene there.

It would be interesting to think about that in USA of nineteen sixties too. I think the notion of public space and public protesting became very much related in peoples minds in recent times.

Also the idea of cinema, people like Bernard Tschumi have argued that cinema, and for the first time actually seeing how people gather etc, in a space for a coup d’etat or something was something that affected how we now perceive space.

Most people experience urban space now, from movies etc.

I like playing a PC game software called Medieval Total War myself, which really does make you realise how medieval spaces/cities worked from the point of view of movement of large crowds/armies on foot/horse.

A lot of the best public spaces around the world date from these times. Much older times and different laws etc.

Again, my reply here to Pat;

https://archiseek.com/content/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2744&pagenumber=3

Originally posted by Diaspora

Thats exactly why Irish soccer is in a mess, too much coaching at a very young age prevents kids from developing their creativity vs the local coaches idea as to what creativity may be.

Similarly in Architecture or any academic field if too much theory is crammed in we lose the message. Which as in soccer comes from yourself or doesn’t exist.

Diamonds in the rough.

I was watching a very good programme about diamonds last night, that is a classic example of where the market is heavily regulated by De Beers, and the programme was all to do with artificial diamonds coming in at the bottom end of the market for around €4000 compared to the high end diamonds worth many more thousands.

That eventually the artificial diamonds may equal in terms of quality and may even surpass that of the real thing.

I think that the Architectural profession is a bit like De Beer’s in this country, sure, they are entrusted with the care of the ‘concept’ of architecture, but do not think for even one second they are always, in every possible situation and in every individual case, going to be the best ‘parents’ of architecture.

De Beer’s put mega bucks into science to allow them to ‘verify a real diamond’. So as not to ‘flood’ the market with fake diamonds.

In the same way, that most of the resources for architectural education in this country are mainly devoted towards ‘verifying’ the existence of a ‘real architect’. As if you could just throw the average early 20 something into a litmus solution and watch the colour turn either oranage or blue.

That is what De Beer’s are reduced to doing now, and so is the architectural education system here in Ireland. Yes diamonds that occur in nature are amazing, and the natural real thing will always be more sought after. Coming about through an amazing process of time and pressure and all sorts of conditions.

But the market for cheaper, artificial diamonds is there waiting to be exploiting, a different market to the market for real diamonds. As yet, no one in this country has shown any interest in this new market, for cheaper architects.

Architecture itself is not ‘owned’ by any profession at all. The concept itself is independent, while it did seem for a while that Man U owned soccer, that is simple not the case, when you get to the core of it.

In fact, the modern game of soccer as we know it today was something born out of the slums in places like Rio De Janiero.

On the subject of cars and Irish Architecture.

One of the best places I know, which explains this and you can experience it physically is Stillorgan centre and junction. It is just off the main Stillorgan dual carriageway and Kilmacud Road Upper comes into the junction, along with a couple of ‘overflows’ from the Stillorglan dual carriageway.

There is a couple of pubs, restaurants, banks, shops, cinema, shopping mall, surface car parking, Omni PLEX and so on. But the place is entirely useless because pedestrian were not anywhere considered in the whole equation. It is ALL 100 car in that case, how to drive your car, get out of it and shop.

It is easy to talk about density and ‘mothers walking’ to shops etc, but, it still doesn’t work when you have a mess of traffic like that. It is one of the few places I know in Dublin city, where the cars literally ‘keep driving’ even though the ‘green man’ is turned on!!!!! and old ladies are tried to cross the road.

It is just so much hassle to get from the Omni PLEX to the cinema, to the shopping mall!!! Across all the lanes and traffic going in all directions.

Is there someone else who you have to lobby to each year?

This is something I think, which may not be possible, but would offer a way more depth to discussions here: The ability to cut in anywhere on a discussion and reply directly to a specific user’s post.

Message board formats.

This is where I started off as an online message board contributor:

http://www.aceshardware.com/forum

It is a pretty radical approach to a message board design, and serves that online community of computer specialists surprisingly well indeed. Notice how you can cut in anywhere in the thread. Meaning you can have a number of parallel discussions on the same thread. The only way you know what is a new post, is by the red ‘new’ sign at the start of a new post.

Any threads you have looked at turn from blue to purple in the main message board list. The messages just move off the screen as each day goes by. You have to keep the links yourself somewhere, like in an email or somewhere, if you wish to re-visit an older thread from a month ago say.

This means the message board constantly gets flushed periodically rather like a toilet. Allowing discussion about new computer products, new articles, topics etc to take precedence all the time. I mean, I could keep adding some stupid comment to a thread of my own making every day for months to keep it at the top of this message board.

While this feature can be an advantage for some old threads like ‘The spike’ where some new piece of information breaks about it. I can see how it would ‘piss off’ regular posters a bit too, with guys like myself camping on the discussions I just wish to stay active.

A good example of introducing talent from the bottom up, is possibly in the case of soccer and other sports. You do not find managers as such, going around telling very young players how to play better soccer.

Did you witness that massive pedestrian choke point created on the route up from Hapenny bridge as far as Roches Stores during the xmas spending? Where about 40 thousand people were trying to squeeze into a space about the width of two people standing?

I think, half the crowd who wanted to go and shop in the Illac and Roches, Arnotts, Marks and Spencer, Jervis Street etc, must have just turned around completely and walked back over the Liffey again.

Mind you, the Jervis Street Shopping centre had the considerable foresight when designing their operation, to add that second crucial access point on a corner, on Jervis Street. While that entrance needed escalators, and considerable trouble to make it happen – it probably is worth a bomb in terms of increasing footfall through the Jervis Street centre.

Similarly with St. Stephen’s Green Shopping centre – the provision of multiple acess points really stands out in my mind, as being a sucess in terms of retail profitability.

Not all shopping centres etc, observe this crucial fact though, and many just fail, because they only have one access point. Thus many the creation of a pedestrian route through the centre impossible. Cleary’s shop in O’Connell Street is a clear example of that – with massive decay of shoppers moving through that shop in the past 10 years.

And it is not all down to the sucess of Henry Street either – rather it is the design of circulation in Clery’s doesn’t lend itself at all nowadays to the ‘browse and stroll’ attitude of todays ‘consumerism as a hobby/pastime’ market out there.

Scary things are happening to the Illac these days I think too, have any of you walked into the ‘Dunnes Stores’ in the Illac lately! 🙂 I remember when that used to be a pretty decent shop space.

I think that Roches saw the opening, and invested wisely in their new premises. Between Arnotts and Roches now, and Jervis centre, the Illac doesn’t stand a chance. Except at the very, very, very bottom (scraping the bottom) end of the market.