The History of Street Furniture

This isn't meant to be an absolute history backed up with stackd of evidence, merely my musings based on what I have picked up over the years - hope it's of some interest ...

What It Is and Where It All Began

Street Furniture is one of those phrases that very few people relate to, but which relates to them in more ways than they realise.

Street Furniture plays a role in peoples lives that is not often realised, and as such is overlooked.  Street Furniture surrounds people in many ways in many arenas - lighting our way at night, directing us in traffic, giving us plces to rest and sit and keeping us safe as pedestrians.

Although street furniture may be easily overlooked, it provides us with interesting information and valid insights into some of the ways that local authorities, the central government, designers, planners, architects or even occasionally charitable associations intervened in the environment to make it more pleasant or convenient for city residents.

Wikipedia has this to say about street furniture.

The Open University has this to say about street furniture

It is widely understood that the Romans introduced the concept of street furniture, using milestones and waymarkers on their ubiquitous roads.  Beyond this street furniture and its growth has been linked to the developments in transport alongside an increasing population and urbanisation.

Urbanisation and Street Furniture

Broadly speaking, modern street furniture of the types and with the uses found in modern urban spaces, town and cities, owes many of its roots to the growing need for lighting.  Back as far as 1417, London was lit by gas lanterns at certain times of the year. This is not confined to the UK either, Paris was first lit by gas lighting in 1524.

Subsequent trends continued and the need for lighting public areas grew. The movements of people from rural to urban areas and the burgeoning industrial growth furthered these requirements.

By 1823 many of Britains towns and cities were lit by gas, and by 1859 gas lighting in the home, workplace and in the streets was all over Britain. This in itself helped to forge the beginnings of the industrial revolution.

Wikipedia link to the history of gas lighting

Whilst street furniture in the form of gas ligting played its role in these social and economic leaps forward, a wider development in street furniture was taking place.  Increases in urban populations and the subsequent increases in transport requirements (firstly by horse and cart/carriage and latterly the motor car) demanded that pedestrains get some protection.  The bollard was born. Exactly when is not clear but it is widely believed that out of service cannon muzzles were used as bollards - cannons were turned on end with a cannonball fixed into the aperture, they provided excellent protection. Even today, the cannon pattern is a very popular and robust style of bollard.

These early bollards may not yet have had their own name though, the word ‘bollard’ may have come from the French/Norman word 'boulard’ which was a small wooden or iron post used to tie up ships when in dock. Nowadays these are simply known as mooring bollards.

Wikipedia has this to say about bollards

Street Furniture Through the Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution saw major changes across Britain and indeed the world.  Much of the Industrial Revolution fell within the Victorian Era, which itself saw the growth of the British Empire.  The combination of rapid, often chaotic changes in towns and cities fuelled by massive scale urbanisation alongside the growth of the colonies and the development of new world markets saw a coming of age for street furniture.

Urban areas were developed to create accommodation and new transport networks. Pedestrian areas were also provided.  The wealth created by the industrial revolution meant that towns and cities could create their own bollard patterns, which for the first time not only did a practical job but were also placed for aesthetic reasons and to promote civic identity.

The growth of the railways also created an arena for the development of street furniture. The wealthy rail companies created their own bollard patterns and provided what was probably the first public seating areas.  Outdoor seating, mostly made from cast iron and timber, provided rest for the weary traveller.

Beyond the Industrial Revolution

Since the Industrial Revolution and the Victorian Era ended, urban design and urban planning has seen its conception. Urban design has taken street furniture’s humble foundations and developed complicated coordinated schemes. Where once only timber and iron existed, modern day street furniture is manufactured in steel, stainless steel, polyurethane, granite, aluminium - in fact, if a material is robust enough for external use, there is probably an item of street furniture made from it.

To restart this blog it's probably best to do a bit of a catch up. We have carried on growing in what and how we work over the years - increasing the range of meterials we work in and the processes we have. Our parent company, WB White Foundry, have acquired another foundry to add to our small group of companies, this one specialising in all grades of SG (Ductile) cast iron. This means we can now cast in these materials much easier then previously, and offer incredible strong grades of cast iron to boot - and it's it's still (sort of) in house. Their website is here -  have a nosy: https://www.ductileironfoundry.co.uk/

We do much more work with granite now, and have extended our sub contract manufacturing capabilities in all forms of metal afbrication as well.

We have also put together a load of PDF brochures using 3D rendering, a necessity for us as we manufacture such a huge range of products, photographing them all is impossible - so at least now you can browse our most polular lines and get an idea of what we can do. Everything you see in these brochures is available as a BIM object too - so pop onto our website at www.asfco.co.uk and select product downloads, the brochures feature under the categories.

The big move at the moment is realising our potential for post and rail/post and panel/railings etc. This is something we have always done but never realised just how much of a specialism it is. From cast iron, to stainless steel, glass, and everything inbetween we can supply standard range and bespoke items. We have also added in a LED lighting as an option for handrailing etc, something that is increasing in polularity all the time - anyway, enough talk. Better get some work done.

 

Time to recover the old blog and get it out there

I haven't added to this for years but I shall try and keep it up to date now - with images, articles, daft stuff and and the amm important case studies

Watch this space ...

Where land meets sea, the aluminium answer

We couldn't pass up the opportunity to work with new materials in new ways. We were asked to look at a job at Bexhill on Sea where they needed a new promenade barrier. Under normal circumstances we;d have played the cast iron card strongly, given that it's cost effective, stylish and very long lasting but the brief was clear - the customer wanted aluminium.

This can throw up a few issues, aluminium traditionally does not do too well in marine environments so we had to make sure what we supplied would do the job. Fortunately, having the aluminium hard anodized is a fairly straight forward process.

Essentially, anodizing involves immersing aluminium in a bath of sulphuric acid (called an electrolyte) and running a low voltage electric current through it. The resit of normal anodizing is a thin coating of aluminium oxide (rust) on the surface of the original aluminium. If the solution is cooled to the freezing temperature of water and the amount of electric current increased substantially, this process becomes hard anodizing. This produces a much thicker coating of aluminium oxide - aluminium treated in this way is only a few hardness points away from diamond.

This process will protect the aluminium against the harsh salt environment for some time to come.

With the simple and clean lines agreed, the addition of a machined aluminium cap was the final touch to create a modern, stylish and very clean minimalist seafront barrier.

The Completion of the Bridge!

After 10 months of work the refurbishment and renovation of the original 1889 cast iron bridge parapet is now complete.

The parapet sits on the grade II listed Cleggford Bridge in Dewsbury (West Yorkshire) - the stone bridge itself dates back to the 1700's and the parapet was added later.

The job was time consuming and at times tricky. Following long discussions and many meetings, the brief was to bring the parapet back into useable condition whilst maintaining as much of it's original structure as possible - and this includes retaining any erosion, weathering and past repairs, regardless of how badly these had been bodged!

The fact that ASF have our own metallurgist, pattern makers, casting engineers, fabricators, welders and a host of technical experts meant that this was a job we could manage (I actually don't thing that many companies could do this type of work nowadays). In order to meet the brief a modular system was developed for repair of major sections so that only the parts of the parapet that were absolutely beyond rescue needed to be replaced. In addition to this, various methods of invisible mending were developed so that the parapet could be strengthened whilst keeping it's weathered look.

This is easier said than done, the whole problem of minimal impact whilst completing a full scale renovation was made more difficult as each of the 100+ component parts of the parapet were subtly different at best and often dramatically different. The modular system developed therefore had to be flexible enough to be adaptable to this.

There is more information on the bridge renovation on the projects page of the ASF website.

A story of Bridges and Bronzes

Half way through 2010 already and the year has gone from strength to strength.

Alongside our ongoing street furniture supply work we have been working on a few special projects. Working with CR Reynolds and Kirklees council we are now on the final stages of refurbishing a Victorain Bridge Parapet. Our specialist knowledge of cast iron has allowed us to take on this job which has at once been exciting, interesting, and exceedingly difficult.

We are also in the finishing straight of a job casting and supplying bronze street furniture and paving features for Crowle Market Square, Lincolnshire. This is a highly bespoke job that has thrown up not insignificant challenges along the way!

Other interesting jobs completed this year have been supplying bespoke street furniture for the ongoing rennovation to Bradford City Centre and the manufacture of some stunning stainless steel tree grilles for Gatwick Airport.

ASF Street Furniture - new for 2010

With January out of the way and everyone back at work we can now see the way ahead for 2010. We have created a new website that highlights some of our casting capabilities in our foundry.

The new microsite is dedicated to green sand manufacturing and casting, the oldest mass production technique in mould making.

The new green sand foundry website, is at

www.greensandfoundry.co.uk

This one page site outlines what greensand is, how the process works and the kind of things we can manufacture with it.