Artistic manhole covers grace streets of Wuhan
By: By Liu Kun and Zhang Xiaomin
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Artistic manhole covers grace streets of Wuhan
Exquisitely designed manhole covers adorn roads in Wuhan, Hubei province. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn] This same caption applies to every photograph.
More than 50 exquisitely designed manhole covers in Wuhan, Hubei province, integrating the corporate culture of Wuhan Water Group with the city's unique geography, landmark buildings and history add a bit of culture to mundane roads.
The so-called City Badge of the Han River series manhole covers were co-designed by Wuhan Water Group, along with teachers and students from Wuhan University. They were cast by Hanshui Technology, a water group subsidiary.
Made of ductile iron, copper and other materials, they are designed to tell stories of the city.
By scanning a QR code cast in the surface of each cover, one can see the stories of nearby landmark buildings, as well as information of water supply services.
Photos of Wuhan's manhole covers were displayed on the website of UNESCO's Creative Cities Network recently.
"Small manhole covers can be turned into works of art," an article published on the website on May 2 said.
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I wonder if manhole covers are made into works of art anywhere else. I guess Wuhan needed to have something good happening in it.
It looks to be only 3 patterns for the castings and the receiver is the same, the ones that are in color, is that baked porcelain or just paint? The only one I know of in this area is one with cast fish that is a drain that leads directly into Lake Huron, otherwise every other one is a simple cast w/the city and manufactures name. One thing of notice is that when the streets were engineered and installed in China at least they figured the final height of the top layer of the street to make the manhole as flush as possible, here it seems no one uses a level, manholes maybe as much as 3" below grade and sometimes above grade, it makes for a jarring experience and you get into the habit of watching and dodging manholes.
Wuhan, 2020? Good celebration theme. Empty streets.
Sarcasm your strong suit?
LOL. I went back to the original artilcle today and was able to copy and paste the 9th image that I could not do before.
Those are beautiful. In my area a lot of the older sidewalks have bronze badges denoting what company did the concrete work in that section but only on the sidewalks that are about 70 years old or older. These days there are no badges and the quality is shitty so they'll never make it to 70 or more, I guess you do better work when you have to put your name on it for everyone to see and judge.
Using them here would be a waste of money as they are often stolen to be sold as scrap by scavengers.
Really? That goes with the article I posted a little while ago about a bridge being stolen. What's next? People should make sure they sleep with their mouths shut, or someone's going to steal their teeth.