mpark. Mobile Phones & Parking Meters

O2 have a sevice in Dublin city centre whereby you can pay for your parking ticket via your mobile phone. I just read about it on the http://www.o2.ie/ website; haven't tried it. Apparently there's a code on the machine and you type it into the phone and say how much and the machine prints a ticket. Wow! I could only find out about it on O2, checked vodafone and meteor - no mention of it. The http://www.mpark.ie/ website says it's available in Dublin and Dun Laoghaire. But that you need to register beforehand and that it's possible "with any mobile network" - however they only display the vodafone and O2 logos - no mention of meteor. It also says it will "be billed to your credit card or phone provider bill" - does this mean a credit phone (speakeasy, pay-as-you-go) user can't avail of the service? At any rate I think it's amazing and very useful! The demo on the mpark website shoes your NAME displaying on the machine after making the phonecall!!!

Our phones really are more than just phones:

• mp3 player
• camera
• video
• sound recorder
• amusement - games
• diary/ calendar/ reminder/ secretary
• radio
• phonebook/ addressbook
• torch
• crime buster (when the guards use gps to track a suspect's location)
• alarmclock
• watch
• hard cash (as good as! when you're at an mpark machine)

and they're only the uses mine gets put to - what about the raspberries with email and internet access etc.

Car Free Day

Today is car free day the world over and Dublin is no exception.
I came across this website which I thought was very informative and interesting:
http://www.worldcarfree.net/wcfd/
The Dublin City Council press release is very badly put together. Free events at Merrion Sq, Parnell Sq and Herbert Park. Unfortunately I'm sick in bed so won't be joining in!
I remember being abroad for one of these car-free days. I think it might have been Paris, and it was fantastic. Families and all kinds of people were roller-blading, cycling, skate-boarding through the streets. A few years ago I think the buses were free in Dublin on this day.
My family aren't setting a good example though I'm afraid. Both my aunt and my mother came into town today - by car, and they would be users of public transport. Convenience and time constraints made up their minds today.

Urban Sprawl

Dublin City Council and the Institute of Public Administration hosted a conference in Croke Park Conference Centre on Successful Apartment Living - Combating Urban Sprawl.

The speakers were:
Tom Collins, Maynooth University (chair)
Paddy Bourke, Lord Mayor of Dublin
John Gormley, Green Party, Minister for the Environment, Heritage & Local Government
Frank McDonald, Irish Times
Dr. Jane Gray, Social Sciences, Maynooth University
Henk van der Kamp, School of Spatial Planning, Dublin Institute of Technology
John Tierney, City Manager, Dublin City Council
John Bowman, RTÉ (chair)
Lars Fränne, Stockholm City Council, Sweden
Alex Ely, mæ architects
Hubert Fitzpatrick, Irish Homebuilders Association
Daithí Doolan, Sinn Féin councillor, chair of Strategic Policy Committee (SPC) dealing with planning
Mary Murphy, Labour councillor, chair of Housing, Social & Community Affairs SPC

There were about 220 people present and there were contributions from the floor from other Dublin City Councillors and the RIAI president, James Pike, amongst others.

I was extremely impressed with John Tierney and Alex Ely. I think John has great vision and ideas for leading the city of Dublin. Unfortunately, Alex spoke architecture-speak and I think it may have gone over the heads of a lot of the audience. He showed drawings of a scheme which displayed "permeability" and a variety of public-private spaces. A councillor in the audience commented that he was "in favour of gated housing schemes"! I think architects sometimes need to really explain drawings to clients/audiences. Point out the stairs on the street frontage where the resident enters their home and then can go out the back to the shared garden in contrast to a resident driving through a remote-controlled gate, to park their car in a shared space and scuttle in their own door. People without experience can't read all this from a drawing. There was also misunderstanding about high density=high rise. Alex argued it didn't, in fact density could drop with high-rise (I didn't take in the detail of this argument) but people weren't able to take this on board. I arrived home, to my one-and-half-storey on-street terraced city-centre house and it dawned on me that I am living in quite a high-density residential area myself. Look out my bedroom window at a tiny yard with bedroom extensions hanging off neighbouring houses. And there are 3 of us living in this 2-bed house so we're making good use of space. I should figure out the density in terms of floor area/footprint etc. I was also walking around the Peppercanister church area of the city and was amazed by the amount of mews houses and use that is made of laneways.

Departmental (D/EHLG) draft guidelines regarding minimum room sizes/ storage space etc were discussed a lot. And how they compared with the council's guidelines. Architects I spoke to afterwards claimed that the social housing they are designing is of a better standard, in terms of dimensions and thought, than those available on the market. Van der Kamp's talk was of the hierarchy of development plans (and guidelines). The order should be: national, regional, county, local; they lower ones adhere to those of a higher standing and are more specific.

Jane Gray has done research on people living in Ratoath, Leixlip, Mullingar and Lucan/Esker. She concluded they all like where they are living. And the commuter travelling from Mullingar-city centre Dublin isn't that extremely common.

Lars Fränne mentioned vacuuming-rubbish collection and how Sweden have abolished guidelines for minimum room dimensions etc.

Hubert Fitzpatrick gave the expected industry response regarding the financial loss homebuilders will make with the introduction of these new guidelines; apartments now have to be bigger. He also referred to the heating recommendations in the Building Regulations as if they were optimum and not absolute minimum. Worrying.

Frank McDonald related a nice story about growing up in the city centre and living there now. Pleasant.

As is proably usual with such conferences, there was very little conclusion.

Green Procurement / The Walmart Documentary

At a presentation in the Custom House entitled "The Carbon Footprint of the Public Service" I first heard about Green Procurement. It's just another aspect that purchasers need to take into account when assessing tenders received. And where does the idea of Green-ness start and finish? Green resources: natural and sustainable, green manufacturing, green transportation, green maintenance. It's a whole new checklist!
And on a similar vein, I've just watched "Walmart-The High Cost of Low Price" and it's put me off buying things in Penney's & Dunnes. buying clothes cheap means someone somewhere is suffering/ there is abuse. Does buying in second hand clothes shops count? Or making clothes? What about where the fabric is coming from?

Water-saving device for toilet

We have added a great little button to our toilet at home. It saves water by only using the amount of water necessary for flushing. When the pan is clear, the user presses the button and the water stops. So it doesn't take as long to refill.

http://www.meconwml.com/

This is my second posting about toilets! And I'm intrigued/ curious about Japanese heated toilets so watch this space!

Fringe Fest 2007 - Free Events

I've been making graphicy timetabley things again!

Blogging II

My blog has passed its 21st posting. It's growing up in the world. Establishing itself in terms of tone and content. I thought I would have things of greater worth to say here. It's good to see I have opinions though. But they're not particularly deep!
One of the purposes of starting to blog was that I would ensure I did something design etc related at least once a week and so far I have found that to be the case. I remind myself that I need something as fodder to blog about so I go to an exhibition or notice an object or read something etc.

Frankfurt

I spent Friday wandering around Frankfurt. No real purpose other than getting my haircut! Sitting on the square outside the Zoo, a tram went by: it was going to Ernst May Platz. It was like lightning struck me "I'm in Frankfurt, where the Frankfurt Kitchen is!" How I failed to make the connection, having been so interested in the design of this kitchen (it's the subject of my first post on this blog) is strange and beyond me!!! So I set off on a mission, full of excitement and apprehension that there were enough hours in the day to find and see the flat complex and that it would be open and that I would find people with the info.
So I figured my first port of call should be The Deutsche Architektur Museum. The staff were incredibly unhelpful and weird. They knew nothing and didn't care to help so all I could do was pay my entrance fee to the museum. It was utter crap. One of the temporary exhibs was being changed. The way in to the exhibition rooms was bizarre - through the empty auditorium, down a corridor, up a stairs and having to choose between corridoors or doors. It was very unclear. Badly laid out. So I found the permanent exhibition. A series of models called "From hut to skyscraper" or something. It had models of buildings representing generic building types - ie a primitive hut, a medieval cathedral, a greek amphitheatre. Nonsense! No architectural depth. Appropriate for a children's sideshow but not as the main exhibit in an architectural museum. Is it the national such musuem? And on the top floor: "American Architecture Today". A huge poster, each the same layout, with a picture of the partners in the practice, a biography, a photograph and maybe a drawing or photo of a model - and this for maybe 20 architects. Nonsense. Suitable for a pamphlet but by no way representative of American architecture in 2007.
And so i went to the tourist info office in the main train station where I met a most helpful young guy who happens to live in pne of the apartment blocks that used to have the Frankfurt Kitchen. So he knew about them! He looked on the computer/internet maybe and said the preserved kitchen was open to the public on saturday from 3-6 but I wasn't free and couldn't go. I didn't ask him if I could go home for dinner with him! Or even if his apartment still had the original kitchen (even the layout). And I didn't check to see if there was a phone number I could ring to make an appointment. But I did some internet-ing back in the hotel and saw that the Kitchen is reconstructed in the V&A so a trip to London is quite urgent as I've written an article on the subject and hope for it to be published.
As for Frankfurt, I didn't feel safe in the city. I found it grubby. The riverside however was beautiful; a really interesting space/place. And the way the museums are mostly all in the one area is cool. Though maybe that's a German thing-I'm thinking of Berlin's Museuminsel.