Nice Bollards
Taipei is a surprising city. There’s a fine line between ugly haphazardness and charming idiosyncrasy; for the most part, the Taiwanese capital seems to land on the latter side. Its broad boulevards would be bland and overwhelming if it weren’t for the arcaded sidewalks filled with parked scooters. The rambling lanes that run between those boulevards are lined for the most part with architecturally uninspiring apartment buildings, but the abundance of potted plants, hidden café terraces and dilapidated wooden bungalows more than make up for that. In theory, Taipei has everything going against it, but it gets so many small things right that it’s actually a pretty remarkable place.
These bollards are just one example of what I mean. Many people have a love-hate relationship with bollards: on one hand, they’re often ugly and overzealously implemented, but on the other, they keep cars out of pedestrian space. (In any case, they’re a lot nicer than the hideous grey fences that Hong Kong uses to segregate pedestrian and vehicular traffic.) Only rarely do they exceed their immediate purpose, which is why I like the bollards just outside Ximen metro station, in which images of historical streetscenes are embedded. Over on busy Yongkang Street, meanwhile, chubby concrete bollards add to the street both a place to sit and something a bit more unexpected.
Tags: Street Furniture, Taipei
Cedric Sam says:
This first bollard reminds me of a stone face character in Spirited Away. Coincidentally, I read that the town of Jioufen (Jiufen or 九份), near Keelung on the Northern side, was used as a model for the town in SA.
December 18th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
Mary says:
In Changsha, they are just huge balls of marble, or alternatively, buckets of concrete on small streets. The buckets are actually large old paint buckets.
January 3rd, 2009 at 4:45 am