Video Showing The Development of Bridgefoot Street Park – Dublin City Council has uploaded a youtube video showing the development of Bridgefoot street park.
The aim is to provide green spaces for the local community. There will be play areas, a community Garden, a multi functional performance space and lighting to ensure security of the park after daylight hours. It will have a potential cafe space, and will hopefully provide improved accessibility for all.
The designers of the park are taking inspiration from local communities, who used the area previously as a community garden, creating art pieces out of any material that could be found at hand. In keeping with this idea, the park will have landscape features created from materials on site, or from other construction sites in the area.
One benefit of this approach is it lowers the energy cost of development and the carbon footprint, but it also provides continuity with the Community Garden created by a small group led by Richard Taplin, which provided a magical artistic space in urban surroundings. The project provided a creative outlet in the area and this will hopefully be continued in the relocation of the garden to the South-East of the site.
To the west there will be a playground which will avail of new lighting to ensure visibility. The route through the park will be well lit, allowing access during darker months. It will also provide a link to the digital hub to the south-west of the site.
The creation of large mounds from material brought in, ensures that construction of the park can be done without excavation. The site was perhaps used as a municipal dump or layfall back in 1756, and there were artifacts found in the upper levels such as medieval glass and ceramics. The park design is structured in such a way as to cause minimal impact and damage.
Bridgefoot Street Park received planning consent in 2017 and is being led by Dermot Foley Architects and Dublin City Council Parks and Landscape Services.
Dublin City Council have uploaded a time-lapse video of the construction work done so far, and contractor Bracegrade is looking to finish the project after they were due to return to the site on the 4th May. See the time-lapse here:
