Time to Take to the Streets

So good", the slogan of KFC, is not the characterisation that springs to mind when you see the fast-food chain's latest outlet on Dublin's Westmoreland Street. Its shopfront, given planning permission by Dublin city council, evokes all the virtues of a bathroom display in a factory warehouse, but tacked onto an 18th-century building. Reconstituted-stone tile cladding, cheap-looking metallic strips and clumsy aluminium window frames are finished with a flourish of posters across its expansive windows. In fairness, the shopfront is flanked the length of Westmoreland Street by an embarrassing spectacle of more chaotic proprietary cladding, unauthorised signage, flags, banners, piped music and illiterate colour schemes. Irish businesses on the strip are the worst culprits, while the council seems oblivious to this cringe-inducing mess on a...