A bollard, also known as a "boulard" or a "bole, " is a fairly short post positioned at 90 degrees to the surface of the earth. While bollards were once used mainly for mooring ships, they now have any number of functions. In AD 203, one of the earliest examples of a bollard was behind the Arch of Septimius Severus, where they protected the arch from being damaged by passing vehicle traffic. Modern versions are often used to prevent incidents of ram-raiding or vehicular terrorism in the form of suicide bombings.
Dragon's teeth are a special form of bollard. These are square pyramidal posts of reinforced concrete. They were first used during the Second World War to slow down the progress of tanks and to channel them towards "killing zones." Dragon's teeth were extensively employed in the Siegfried Line, a defense system built in the 1930s opposite the French Maginot Line.
The area around Winchester Cathedral has a whimsical display of boulards used both functionally as well as decoratively. Designed primarily to keep vehicle traffic separate from pedestrians, a number of them have been painted with features from famous paintings. Here, Da Vinci's Mona Lisa joins adapted works of Mondrian, Lautrec, Klimt, Matisse and others.
Another type of bollard is the bell. Situated on sidewalks at traffic junctions, they would appear to have the function of causing pedestrians to trip and fall, or at least stub their toes. Not so. Their shape presumably keeps heavy goods vehicles from jumping onto the pavement.
Often, you will see the posts lit up from the inside to help motorists avoid jumping curbs at night. One London artist took it upon herself to decorate one on her street with delightful flowers and butterflies drawn in marker pen. Apparently, in her home town of Bribane, Australia, the city council positively encourages people to decorate signal boxes in this manner.
London, England, has some amazing examples of boll-art. A particularly poignant example is entitled, "The Two Pupils." The complete sculpture consists of a little bronze girl sitting on top of a plinth. Nearby, there is a little boy leap-frogging over a bollard. The plinth is engraved with the story of the two children.
There is something about the mooring bollard with a perpendicular bar that seems to attract tourists with cameras. The purpose of the bar is to enable sailors to wind ropes around in a figure eight pattern when mooring a boat or a ship. Recent examples may be found in Marina of Izola, Lyme Regis and in the borough of Ghent in the principality of Wales.
The bollard is an inescapable part of urban life, at least in the United Kingdom. London is full of 'em. We trip over them. We back into them. We curse them and sometimes, we paint them. We wouldn't want to be without them. In a world with no boulards, more pedestrians would be struck by vehicles, cars would go the wrong way down one-way streets and sailors would not be able to make figure eight's with their ropes. Boles. Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em. Long live the bollard!
Dragon's teeth are a special form of bollard. These are square pyramidal posts of reinforced concrete. They were first used during the Second World War to slow down the progress of tanks and to channel them towards "killing zones." Dragon's teeth were extensively employed in the Siegfried Line, a defense system built in the 1930s opposite the French Maginot Line.
The area around Winchester Cathedral has a whimsical display of boulards used both functionally as well as decoratively. Designed primarily to keep vehicle traffic separate from pedestrians, a number of them have been painted with features from famous paintings. Here, Da Vinci's Mona Lisa joins adapted works of Mondrian, Lautrec, Klimt, Matisse and others.
Another type of bollard is the bell. Situated on sidewalks at traffic junctions, they would appear to have the function of causing pedestrians to trip and fall, or at least stub their toes. Not so. Their shape presumably keeps heavy goods vehicles from jumping onto the pavement.
Often, you will see the posts lit up from the inside to help motorists avoid jumping curbs at night. One London artist took it upon herself to decorate one on her street with delightful flowers and butterflies drawn in marker pen. Apparently, in her home town of Bribane, Australia, the city council positively encourages people to decorate signal boxes in this manner.
London, England, has some amazing examples of boll-art. A particularly poignant example is entitled, "The Two Pupils." The complete sculpture consists of a little bronze girl sitting on top of a plinth. Nearby, there is a little boy leap-frogging over a bollard. The plinth is engraved with the story of the two children.
There is something about the mooring bollard with a perpendicular bar that seems to attract tourists with cameras. The purpose of the bar is to enable sailors to wind ropes around in a figure eight pattern when mooring a boat or a ship. Recent examples may be found in Marina of Izola, Lyme Regis and in the borough of Ghent in the principality of Wales.
The bollard is an inescapable part of urban life, at least in the United Kingdom. London is full of 'em. We trip over them. We back into them. We curse them and sometimes, we paint them. We wouldn't want to be without them. In a world with no boulards, more pedestrians would be struck by vehicles, cars would go the wrong way down one-way streets and sailors would not be able to make figure eight's with their ropes. Boles. Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em. Long live the bollard!
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