Overseas Makeover

Just quickly for now: the Athfield-designed Overseas Passenger terminal has just been granted resource consent, having satisfied previously held concerns related to construction issues.

Transport - the route ahead

In what seems like a record fast time for Public Consultation, Greater Wellington Regional Council and Transit have turned out results from the public consultation round.  As Transit’s “Phase 2 Consultation Report” notes, there was a total of 4673 submissions, including 3750 Option 3 “Green Alliance” postcards and 482 Chamber of Commerce postcards received, and a mere 71 actual written submissions from various bodies and organisations.

It is gratifying to note that the Eye of the Fish’s comments were also noted on their “Media Article Log” page, with all three of our postings listed, along with other bloggers including Poneke, Wellurban, the Greens, and http://libertyscott.blogspot.com/ (and of course the old-style mainstream media of Dom Post and Capital Times etc). It would be nice to think that we (readers and writers alike) can have a positive outcome on the possible future of our city. We’re not sure how the study will balance the clearly massive media push from Option 3 with their highly successful postcard mail in re the Ngauranga to Airport study, vs the more carefully considered deliberations from other organisations (such as that published online by the Architecture Centre), and as …

Courtenay loses some parks; gains a Park

The Courtenay Place Park seems more-or-less finished now, having recently unveiled the second and final stage of it’s development. A very minimal and very urban park, it’s strengths lies in the quality of the finish and detailing, as well as the enhancement of pedestrian flow within this highly-traffic area.

The park creates two axes, each in parallel to the adjacent street or footpath, resulting a wedge-shaped open area. Although this central space is fairly large, its awkward shaping is perhaps too restrictive for the programmes of “markets, street performances, theatre crowds, festivals” that the council had envisioned.

Wellington’s ubiquitous terracotta tiling is out in full force, which more than anything seems to enable the pack as an extension of the footpath. While this is certainly in-line with the park’s goals - would a tiny bit of variety be too much to ask? Even a minor substitution of the secondary tan/gold bricking for something else would go a long way to creating more of a unique sense of place.

Seven light boxes line the Courtenay street-site, seemingly gigantic incarnations of the cycling advertisement boards found at many bus stops. …

The Congestion Pricing Roadmap

It seems that the roadmap to congestion pricing is itself congested: gridlocked by an array of obstacles and opinions.

We have a $200k report/proposal, dense legal obstacles, technical challenges, a mayor that is “not even lukewarm”, and a public that is overwhelming against the issue.

So what happens next? Nothing?

The first hurdle seems to lie with parliament, in the resolution of the various legal issues that block the access charges on a state highway. Of course this issue is to be postponed for a “future government;” for a time when the problem is so sufficiently entrenched that the public will be sufficiently mellowed to any proposed changes.

Its a shame - Wellington is in many ways the ideal candidate for congestion pricing. The linear road corridors mean that minimal infrastructure is needed, and the various options proposed for the Ngauranga to Airport corridor will undoubtedly require the sourcing of significant new funds in the future.

Looking at the comments that the Dom received from both its street sampling and its online discussion, one of the issues cited by several interviewees is that as they are already being taxed on petrol prices, so another levy is unnecessary and unfair. The latter may be true, but …

Apartment survey

Wellington City Council has launched a survey to find out who is living in the inner city, asking questions such as how long inhabitants have been there, how big their apartments are, and if / where they park their car. About 6500 surveys have been mailed out (which perhaps gives us a clue as to how many apartments are there already) according to this council link, but if you haven’t been sent one, you can still complete one online. The survey runs until 31 May, so we’re not going to see any results for a while yet, but there is a prize of a $200 voucher for a meal at Logan Brown for one lucky punter. Yum. Just take your wallet anyway, because that’s not going to go that far!

One good thing on the survey is that there is a space for suggestions of amenities needed for inner city dwellers - let’s fill their inbox to overflowing. While my personal suggestion list may include such items as the assassination of the 5.00 am rubbish collector, and the requirement for mobile phones to be made illegal to use while walking (I don’t know how people can drive a car when …

Win a trip to Flosten Paradise

All this talk of budget entry-level apartments has got me thinking: what’s the best small apartment you know of? Tempted as I am (not) by the prospect of living forever in a cube, I can none-the-less recognise genius in small apartment design when I see it.

My first pick would have to be the apartment of Korben Dallas in Luc Besson’s “The Fifth Element”, where he lives in a (presumably) budget studio apartment somewhere on the mid-levels. But it has several good design features, apart from the tasteful monochrome colourscheme. Although only about 2-3m wide, and possibly stretching out to 5m long, giving a positively luxurious max 15m2 of internal space, it also features built in mailbox, coffee machine, slide-away bed, and an advanced form of broadband.

It also features the novel use of interfloor space with an autowash shower doubling in the same space as a fridge. Note: neither autowash nor fridge are a good place for storage of unexpected visitors. Nor, for that matter, is the slideaway bed, although that does self seal to avoid bedbug infestations.

See,

…

There is no housing shortage in New Zealand

Following on from the No Affordable Housing post, this is perhaps a somewhat provocative stance, yet it is one that I shall endeavour to put forward in a series of broadly sweeping generalizations such as: As far as I am aware, give or take a handful of people in Cuba Mall, or under Grafton Bridge, there is no shortage of housing in New Zealand. There is a house or apartment for at least every family in the country. There is even a number of homes sitting empty, mostly by the sea. There are no favelas full of homeless people converting rainforest into liebensraum, at least not in this country.
 
But there is a housing problem - and that problem is that while there are plenty of houses, someone else owns them right now. It is the second and third homes owned by the middle-aged, middle classes that are taking the opportunity away from those who want to buy their own. It is a classic bubble that is driven by the baby-boomers born in the years after the Second World War, and as such is part of a world-wide phenomena, rather than just a New Zealand problem. In the 1980s and …

Chew on this

Chews Lane is open, today, at last. The development, under wraps (of sorts) for the last couple of years, has been opened back up to public view, at least on the ground floor. The historic Lane itself has been re-opened, and businesses are poised to open their doors. Some are open already - witness this photo of a gang of supremely fit joggers poised to purchase more water bottles, and the sight of a clear link to the old boating sheds should be a good lure through the link to the other side.

  The buildings above, of course, have still a long way to go, and so we’re not going to critique them here, not just yet. The apartment block, designed by Athfields to straddle both smaller buildings below, still just a steel frame at this point, will be exposing its dark underbelly to the pedestrians below. There’s an interesting playing off of the “old” (a new brick building) and the “new” (a more obvious new build, with overhanging glass walls). Judgement is reserved on that one, till we’ve really had a chance to check it out. Wellurban noted back in September 2007

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No affordable housing?

On Thursday, Wellington held the Inaugural Housing Policy Forum. Admirably timed to help debate housing policies before the election, the Forum set out to examine New Zealand’s peculiar obsession with owning your own home: especially your own, detached, quarter acre, 4 walls and picket-fence type home. 

The range of speakers included the right wing: Don Brash, Phil Heatley, Owen McShane, and Hugh Pavletich - and their answers are a predictable right wing response: tax cuts, develop greenfield sites, reform the Resource Management Act. All these measures will - if you are a believer in right wing National Party / Act policies - allow housing to become more affordable. Key repeated issues such as the high increase of the land price component of houses, and the increasing disparity between wage inflation and house price inflation over recent years (the figures cited indicated a shift from houses costing 320% of wages (1991) to 400% in 2003, and 600% in 2007). That all ties in well with the announcements earlier in the week from Labour’s Shane Jones, that simplifying the Building Consent process will bring the cost of housing down. Umm, yeah right, Shane. Not really an answer to the housing problem.

Hugh Pavletich, of …

Fwd: An open letter to the NZIA

While vaguely in the political arena, I thought I would take a moment to help propogate a recently written address to the New Zealand Institute of Architects. The address follows on from the (relatively) recent Pacific Students of Architecture Congress, and details some of the problems surrounding the disciple of architecture that were explored by the conference.

My knowledge on NZIA matters is fairly limited, so im going to refrain from commentary. But please, feel free to add your say - this is certainly an important issue.

An open letter to the NZIA [pdf]