"Safety AND happiness. Only bollards can deliver this every single day. #WorldBollardAssociation"

https://bsky.app/profile/worldbollardassoc.bsky.social/post/3larnmakims2d

A.Word.A.Day --bollard

https://wordsmith.org/words/bollard.html

What is a Bollard? | Bollard Resources

https://www.reliance-foundry.com/bollard/bollard-definition

This broken electronic parking bollard has a great rhythm

https://www.reddit.com/r/oddlysatisfying/comments/10kjp4e/this_broken_electronic_parking_bollard_has_a/

Low Traffic Neighbourhoods: Is this the UK's most abused traffic bollard?

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-65243274

20 Interesting Gadgets Spotted Around The World That Should Be More Common Everywhere

https://www.demilked.com/public-genius-gadgets/

At least 4 items to do with bollards!

The Bollard That Eats Cars

https://www.neatorama.com/2022/11/26/The-Bollard-That-Eats-Cars/

Fake bollard names [video]

https://www.reddit.com/r/TikTokCringe/comments/wenk6p/dundee_mawhiff_is_my_fave/

A real eye-catcher

Outside of a school in London

The red balls outside Target are more than decor

https://www.the-sun.com/lifestyle/4588503/red-balls-outside-target-more-than-decor-real-use/

The World Bollard Association™ Twitter feed

https://twitter.com/WorldBollard

Outside a school in Dublin

Bollards near a school

The bestest bollard

https://imgur.com/gallery/P2iByRZ 

Lansing bus station

These stalwart and solid beauties, based on the "sapient layer-cake" design of the late Dmitri Markovilova, keep the vehicles where they belong at the Lansing, Michigan bus station. The horizontal pattern, placed at the relative position where eyes would be on a bipedal animal, invokes in the driver a low-level face-detection response, which Markovilova posited would lead the viewer to afford additional attentional capacity to the device, making it more likely to be attended to, even if pre-consciously (that is: below the level of our higher cognitive functions, present in the busy sensorium but not at the "hey there's a thing looking at me" level). You wouldn't necessarily notice them on a conscious level, but would still pay them enough attention to make the extra safe.

Markovilova's partner, Fyodor Gdasnk, put the final touch on the design (which previously had a rounded dome) with the flat top and beveled edge, which helped this design become popular as it made the bollards a good choice for sitting, but not for lying down, which has become a sought-after feature in urban design to discourage homelessness.

Thanks to alert reader Christine for the photo.

Functional pizzazz

Readers of this blog and those that have been in my bollard design symposiums know that I believe there is a place for plain bollards, but that a bollard that incorporates elegant or whimsical design holds a special place in my heart. This is even more true if the bollards has additional functionality or dynamic features. The bollards we view today are found at the East End Building in Midland, Michigan. They are, at their core, stalwart blockers of automotive traffic, but are enhanced by these brushed aluminum covers:

Which not only match them with the other fixtures of the building (the lights, above, and the bike racks, below)…

But also, due to the nature of their mounting (that is: loosely at the base, not at all at the top) allow them some flexibility, so that a traveler on foot or on wheels who runs into one accidentally will not meet an immovable object, but rather a forgiving cover that will save them damage, yet still provide enough of a clang to cause the social embarrassment that serves to teach them to be more careful (see “The Positive, No, Necessary Aspect of Public Humiliation Due To Clumsiness” from Stanford University doctors E. Gontrop and W. Feezoon).

Note the careful orientation here: a full-on display of the hard reality of bollards for drivers, and the other view for the gentle pedestrian,  couched in the thematically-appropriate softening of the buttery metal.

Loosed Cannons: Naval Guns Converted into Mooring Posts & Traffic Bollards

https://99percentinvisible.org/article/loosed-cannons-naval-guns-converted-into-mooring-posts-traffic-bollards/

Badges of Honor

Sometimes a bollard is just a bollard, as the no-nonsense models outside of this local home improvement store illustrate. Note the scrapes and injuries not from vehicles, but rather from the various kinds of carts used to move goods to and fro. There’s a respect afforded things that keep doing what they need to do despite suffering the inevitable dings and scratches of a busy life. These bollards can be proud of what they’ve done, and their scars are badges of honor.

 

 

Bollards are for boats too

Bollards along a dock are known as mooring bollards. The beauties pictured here (at the mouth of the Saginaw River) have both small tie-down loops at the top, and larger nose-shaped stops midway down, to keep the mooring lines of larger vessels on the post. The bolts used to mount these bollards to the seawall in this case are 12 feet long titanium lock-bolts, as thick as your wrist, the better to hold moored ships in place when the cities upstream inevitably release a deluge of millions of gallons of untreated sewage into the river at the slightest sprinkling of rain, which for some reason is a surprise unplanned-for event for the water treatment people when it happens several times a year every year.

Do I even have to tell you to click the image to see a larger version of it? How do you not know that already?

The Whimsical Bollard

The Bollards of Jacksonville Beach

[Click images to view at full size]

A recent trip to Jacksonville Beach in Florida revealed some nice work:

These understated old-school bollards didn't seek to compete with the festival atmosphere of the seaside, but did their jobs solidly and without drawing undue attention…

… except for those called into duty for power distribution (assisting with the annual Deck The Chairs event).

Just a few blocks away these obelisk-inspired bollards seemed delightfully and incongruously modern.

Oh Boise

[click image to enlarge]

Thanks to alert reader Cailynn for sending this image from one of my favorite cities, Boise, Idaho. At first glance one might ho-hum at a set of bollards that might be considered rather plain, but Cailynn (a student of neuroscience at a local university) correctly points out that they are arranged with a slight narrowing of the pattern between the third and fourth ones; a principal known in urban design as "subliminal indicative asymmetry"; a break in the regularity of evenly-spaced things to alert the observer to the presence of something that may impede their progress or allow egress; yet at a subtle enough level as to not be consciously recognized, so as to not contribute to the sensory overload that can often cause trouble for those new to a complicated (or as Boise has often been called, chaotic) environment.

The Three Sentinels

These are found at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University. Their sly reference to Dr. Who's Daleks did not go unnoticed by this aficionado, let me tell you.

[Click image to enlarge]

Their squat, muscular imperviousness provide a delicious counterpoint to the strangely-angled, almost brutalist construction of the museum, no?

[Click image to enlarge]

Bollards, or How Cities Are Protecting Their Public Spaces From Terrorism

Link: https://science.howstuffworks.com/engineering/civil/bollards-or-how-cities-are-protecting-public-spaces-from-terrorism.htm

British road barriers, modeled on children, stare into you

"A town in Buckinghamshire, England, has repositioned road barriers made to look like children after a resident said they were too creepy. The toddler-sized safety posts were designed to be more attention-grabbing than the standard poles, and are."
Link: https://boingboing.net/2017/12/09/british-road-barriers-modeled.html