Eye of the Fish

One of our hard working sleuths posted us a sly link to this little beauty the other day - many thanks, for the interesting link, to this nice eco-friendly green kindergarten in Sighartstein, Austria by a German practice called Kada Wittfeld Architektur. To be frank: it intrigues me.

There’s a very clear simple diagram to this building - a 2-storey rectangular building surrounded by green meadows and fields, with glazed walls opening out to the sun on the ground floor for the older children, and a creche safely tucked away on the first floor. The shield that wraps around the upper floor is in the form of stylized grass - “Das obere Geschoss erhält eine vorgesetzte Fassade in Form stilisierter Grashalme.” I’m not sure what material it is - hopefully its not something too expensive, like bronze - but it does do a lovely job of shading.

The form seems admirably simple…

It was great to see the Dominion Post actually use some of its reporters to explore some of the local issues in the Weekend, with a two whole (almost) full pages on developments on the Wellington waterfront. The WCC is currently in the throes of evaluating further submissions on Variation 11 (regarding the Waterfront), which, rather confusingly to me, comes about 7 years after the Variation 17 debacle erupted onto Wellington’s radar. 11 comes before 7? How does that work? Does WCC have a time machine, or did they helpfully leave an empty slot in the schedule? Or do they just count backwards towards zero? And what happens then? Does the universe explode? Implode? Its just all so perplexing.

Despite that confusing possibility of a Big Bang while I zipped through the Sudoku, I got quite excited while reading the paper, due to the following statement in the report:

“Several new buildings…

Possibly this may be a part of the current Government policy that may not have been thoroughly thought through yet, but it seems to us here at the Fish that there may be some parts of this policy that may not work.

I’m talking about the proposal to construct some additional prison space for all the naughty boys by using standard shipping containers, and getting the prisoners to help construct their own prisons out of them. I confess, I had to check my calendar - no, it was not the 1st of April - and my sceptical mind thought that there may be some flaws in the proposal. While it would, on the surface, make some sense, to use the very cheap and very strong steel boxes to construct some short term prison structures, there may also be some similar setbacks.

Letting inmates lose with steel cutting equipment (oxy-acetylene gas axe anyone?) or…

As I love Wellington so much, I hardly ever get a chance to to leave the harbour, but very occasionally I have to leave town (I’m not really much of a flying fish).

I’d heard about these things being installed at Auckland Airport, and I just thought that was typical Jafa bad design in that godawful domestic airport of theirs, but knock me down with a wet kipper: we’ve now got them here in Wellington as well.

You all probably knew about this already - and I can’t believe you’ve been keeping quiet. Is it just me, or isn’t this just the most terrible piece of product design that has ever set foot in this country? I am literally flabbergasted at how inept the design appears to be. Like a bad lampshade from the 80s, or a haircut from the Cure (ok, same thing really), for some unknown, unearthly reason we…

Thorndon’s quite the place to be you know. Apart from being riven in two by a motorway, squashed sideways into the base of a heavy tree-clad hill, beset with a massive supermarket carpark at its heart, and lived in by some of the plutiest snobs that Wellington has seen, it’s all actually quite nice. Some of Wellington’s best writers lived there, and some of the worst ones still do.

But there is an eyesore that is troubling the residents, above and beyond such other eyesores such as the American Embassy, the abortion of a supermarket carpark, the ugly lumpy tower of the Police Association, the row of non-descript office towers etc: yes, its the Thorndon Tavern. Despite having such a captive population, and such a choice location, the owners (the Thai Embassy apparently), were happy to leave the former Tavern to rot for 20 years or more, becoming a terrible temptation for…

In case you haven’t seen the news, a small item from the Council website today says:

Mayor Welcomes Overseas Terminal Decision

Wellington Mayor Kerry Prendergast has welcomed the Environment Court’s decision, released today, that gives the go-ahead for the redevelopment of the Overseas Passenger Terminal (OPT) on Wellington’s waterfront.

Mayor Prendergast described the decision as a vindication of the move to upgrade and redevelop the OPT. “It’s great news for the city - and I look forward to Willis Bond making a start on this very high-profile development.” “While I’m relieved the decision has gone our way, I must say I was always confident that the Court would reject what was in reality a spurious and ill-conceived appeal against the consent granted in May last year.”
Mayor Prendergast says the OPT redevelopment would mean the Council is not faced with the bill for the upgrade of the terminal and the wharf it’s built on.…

An update on where Eye of the Fish is, some 18 months after starting: We’ve posted 145 short articles, of which it has been good to have your feedback on. So much feedback in fact - we’ve just passed our 2000th comment on the blog (not including the 7053 spam intercepted), and that’s a pretty good response rate despite my sometimes random ranting.

That’s a fairly staggering average rate of about 13.8 comments per post - which actually makes this one of the most active architecture and design blogs in NZ.

Hooray for us.

And boo to the approx 48.6 spam per post also. No, I don’t need or want your pills or your online gambling, and I certainly don’t want to see pictures of Paris Hilton naked. The only place for a Hilton in Wellington is somewhere along the waterfront.

By comparison, for instance, Share Architecture in Auckland has had 275…

After the last few weeks of news in NZ, we can at last get back to discussing the really important things in life, like where we might put a light rail system through Central Wellington, what we should do with parking for 40 cars in Lower Cuba St, and whether a car can indeed travel at a slow 5kph indeed, and how you would tell if it exceeded the speed limit if your speedo doesn’t start till 20kph. Far less engrossing indeed than debating how the colour of David Bain’s jerseys was a sign of an impending mass murderer, or whether a man can murder his family without taking a piss-stop, but really, the result boils down to this: just how lucky is Bain to have found the only 12 people in NZ who thought he was innocent - and have them sitting in on his jury. I haven’t met…

If you have read the Dominion Post article on Manners, you will know that the plans to un-mall Manners Mall have just been passed.

If you have read the Dominion Post article, you will also not know the full story. Whether due to the breaking nature of the announcement, or somewhat slanted journalistic intent, the dom doesn’t make mention of the news that the lower end of Cuba St down to Wakefield will be redeveloped as a pedestrian-oriented public space.

If done properly, this seems like it would alleviate any of the harms that adding buses to Manners will create. The streetscape of Manners Mall itself has little distinctive - or valuable - character. Especially after its 2003 makeover. Given its reputation as an emo/goth hangout, it would seem to be defined by the stereotypes that occupy it more than anything else. 

For this reason, I don’t see why the utility that Manners provides…

Today is a big day for architecture in Wellington. No, not because some architect has been given a gong in the Queen’s Birthday honours list - that hardly ever happens in NZ - we only award people who run, jump, or otherwise sweat their way into awards. I find that curious - that the people who have the biggest effect on the physical world around us, the architects and engineers that plan and design the built environment, and the contractors that build it, escape time after time from the award system as if what we do is of no consequence. Of the architects who have won awards in the past, I can recollect only one high roller - Sir Miles Warren. And also Athfield, Moller, Walker, Natusch, McCoy, McRae, Mercep and Sang with slightly smaller gongs. There may be a few more - please enlighten me - but it does show…

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