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Sprouting up through the pale grey cut-stone pavement at the junction of Cook Street and Oliver Plunkett Street is Boom Nouveau. With a total height of over five and a half metres – taller than a double decker bus – this artwork is a streetlamp, a cluster of three poles at varying heights rising together, with each glass lamp pointing off in different directions. They stand like a clump of budding daffodils in a lively pedestrianised area of the city.

The stems of these three streetlamps are made from C-shaped steel bars welded together, and painted a mossy, forest green. A thin steel tube is fixed to the centre of each upright, painted a lighter mint green, a conduit for the electrical wiring for the lamps above. The combination of these natural green colours are reminiscent of the Art Nouveau colouring of the original signs for the Paris Métro.

Above our heads, at heights of 3.2 metres, 4.8 metres and 5.6 metres, are the three glass-covered lamps. They are attached to the central stem with brass plating – a kind of joint that angles the lamps’ heads outwards to cast their light more widely across the junction. The surface of these brass plates has been burnished so that they appear rough, and not so reflective. The hand-blown glass covers for the lamps are amber-coloured, giving the light they cast a warm yellow glow. As they are handmade, their surfaces are slightly different from one another, one may have a more rippled surface, and another a smoother casing.

The collaborative art practice known as Forerunner is comprised of Tom Watt, Tanad Aaron and Andreas Kindler von Knobloch.

The longest of the artworks on the Island City Sculpture Trail, Sentinels runs the full length of Carey’s Lane. At 120 metres, it is almost exactly as long as Dublin’s Spire is tall. The lane itself is quite narrow – just a little over 3 metres wide, and Sentinels runs close to the middle of the lane for most of its length.

Interconnected beams of treated cedar wood are suspended over our heads, with stainless steel fixings and bright red thick sailing rope used to attach them firmly to the walls on either side of this narrow passageway. Originally a warm brown when the artwork was first installed, the cedar will slowly silver over time.

At either end of the lane there is a flat section of wood that is attached at a right angle to the wall, and lit by a natural white neon light strip. A seagull perches on this beam at both ends of the lane – our sentinels. Matching the shape and scale of a seagull, these birds have been cast in black standing out like silhouettes, and
echoing other public sculptures of people, which tend to be black, like cast iron. Both seagulls hold in their beak a golden nugget – a replica of a chicken nugget, cast in jesmonite and covered in gold leaf.

Along the full length of the lane, the jointed sections of wooden beams seem to trace the path of a bird in flight, as one beam bolts to another, changing direction and height, and paced like the beats of the wing, starting at 3.5 metres above the ground, and soaring to 6 metres in places.

Though not a part of the artwork, there are small warm-white fairy lights hung in garlands along the lane which highlight the fixings when illuminated in the evening.

Occupying three floors of a five-floor building on the corner of Princes Street and Oliver Plunkett Street, this artwork draws on locally discovered archaeological finds, and geometric patterns used in decoration in the Bronze Age.

The work is situated on the façade of the building on Princes Street, which has no windows on the upper levels. Each floor of the building has an elaborate cornice at the top, so that it seems as though there were three shelves stacked on top of each other. On each of the three floors, the walls have been painted with large triangle patterns. On the first floor, navy and white triangles; on the second, dusty pink against the natural grey of the building’s plaster work; and on the third, a bright, fresh green, also contrasting with the plaster grey.

On each so-called shelf, a giant replica of the archaeological finds has been mounted. On the first floor is the artefact that gives the artwork its name – The Face
Cup. Originally a practical piece of dining ware, this has been blown up to well over 2 metres high and more than 3 metres wide. Replicating a hand-crafted piece of pottery, its surface is undulating, and shaped by working fingers and thumbs into the soft clay. A face has been carved into the front – two round eyes, a protruding nose, and a thin line for a mouth. An ear lug has been well-formed on the left-hand side, with just a vague ear shape on the right. This face cup was hand-carved in Styrofoam, covered with a smoothing layer of fibreglass, and then painted a dull, antique gold. Though the objects seem to be massive and weighty, they are actually quite light. They are affixed to the wall with stainless steel brackets.

On the second floor is a spoon – its handle pointing upwards, and with deep cracks through its bowl. This too has been made larger than life, at 1.8 metres in height, and 0.75 metres across. Like the face cup, it has been carved and covered to seem like hand-shaped pottery, and painted a dull, antique gold.

On the third floor sits half a cup, as though the other half were inside the building, its handle jutting out over the road. Built and finished in the same manner as the spoon and face cup, this is the last of the three Bronze Age finds.

This artwork sits over the ground floor which is a retail space. One of the former uses for this building was as a theatre in the eighteenth century. It was called the Exchange Building then, and there is a sign that reads “Exchange” on the second floor, near the spoon.

Placed on a very broad expanse of pedestrianised paving in Cornmarket Street, Urban Mirror is a large table, surrounded by seats, and marked by a yellow light on a pole near the centre. This part of the city is also known locally as Coal Quay, and is only a short distance from the River Lee. The paving for the pedestrianised area is striped with slabs in a brownish red, pale grey and a deep charcoal grey.

A bird’s eye view of this artwork makes it appear like the splash created by a drop of water. The table is made of large sheets of stainless steel, highly polished, and perforated with small holes so that water drains easily. It is an abstract blob shape – gentle curves creating lots of different peninsulas for different groups to sit together to grab a quick lunch, or play a game of chess, or just take a moment in a busy city.

There are about 16 stools, also made of stainless steel, dotted around the table in clusters of twos and threes, with gaps in between to allow for wheelchair users, or families with prams and buggies to use the space as well. And, while the surface of the table is level, there is a slight slope in the striped paving underneath for drainage purposes. This means that the table is higher off the ground on one side, with taller stools, and lower elsewhere, with seating more suitable for young children.

Near the middle of the table blob, there is a stainless-steel pole about 3 metres high. At its top is a large yellow ball made from fibreglass with a rippled surface. When lit, this globe is like the sun. It resembles a giant push pin, like the kind of pins that are used as markers on smartphone map apps.

Plattenbaustudio is a Berlin-based architectural practice, led by Jonathan Janssens and Jennifer O’Donnell.