Suffragette City

A few weeks ago now there was a brief article in the DomPost about the possibility of the Parliamentary Precinct around Wellington’s Beehive being brightened up by having Green Women crossing signals, rather than the more traditional Green Man. While some may dismiss this as typical Labour last minute pre-election spin, and others doubt that it even made it into the news at all, it turns out there is more to the business of crossing a road than you might have guessed. 

For a start, there is a graphic history of men and women telling you how and when to cross the road. In America it was always assumed that anyone with enough intelligence to walk upright and chew gum, could also read a simple sign, and so the signs used to read WALK or DONT WALK (in Harlem of course, it was rumoured that signs offered the choice of DONT WALK, BOOGIE, although that may just be urban myth …

WAM Bam Thank you Ma’am

In what may be viewed as the last gasp actions of an arts-loving Prime Minister, a massive refurbishment of the National Library in Wellington has been unveiled by Helen Clark today. The ever-present “Government Architect” Warren and Mahoney have pulled off an audacious move to the formerly venerated building that holds our national collections. Even though there was a large renovation to the Library in the last few years, with Athfield Architects installing a shiny new glass entry into the 1970s designed building in an arguably somewhat un-necessary architectural move, today the proposed “extension” is revealed to rip the entire facade off on all sides, and replace it with a radically different shiny glass frontage - clearly loving the arts doesn’t necessarily co-incide with loving heritage buildings for the dear old PM… 

The original building, designed by Ministry of Works architect Peter Boyes, in 1971, was completed some years later in the 1980s, amongst dire warnings that the space available was not going to be enough for future expansion.  It’s a common problem amongst archives and libraries it seems: a similar problem occurred with the British Library, which had carefully set aside land for future expansion, only for …

Supreme and Enduring Awards

Two central Wellington buildings have won awards at the NZIA’s national awards ceremony in Auckland, according to the Dompost. Both of them are pretty fantastic, and have won awards before - there’s the new Conservation House by Architecture + (completed only a year or so ago) and then there is Massey House by Cedric Firth and Ernest Plishke, some 50 years before.

Massey House is just one of a row of mid-height buildings crowding along Lambton Quay now, but when it was built it stood out in a bold manner that astonished and excited the Wellingtonians of the time. It was considerably taller than all its surrounding neighbours, but was also it had a bold and forward thinking design that still looks crisp today. Eight stories high, with a strictly Modern glazed facade, and the top floor set back, the building is listed as heritage with the NZHPT - one of the few from the modern era that has been deemed worthy of a heritage rating. Amazingly for Wellington, and pretty fantastic for any building from 50 years ago in todays world, one of the original tenants, Parsons bookshop, is still in residence. …

Wellington Hospital - the 800lb gorilla sitting in the corner that no one admits is there

For the last two years since the demolition of the antiquated Wellington hospital, a massive construction has been taking place in Newtown, balanced on its giant rubber base-isolated foundations. Yes it’s too late to ignore it anymore - the hospital has reached a state of completion that, while still some way to go, affords us a chance to review the progress so far.

After a number of years of fighting whether it would be situated in Kenepuru, miles from its constituents in Wellington, it was agreed that a new hospital should rise in the east like a biblical star. Sadly it’s yet to fulfil the promises of its birth (and in fact I haven’t heard a nice word said about it yet), but let’s take this step by step. Is a hospital just a machine for being sick in? or does it have some greater obligation to the huddled and downtrodden masses of Newtown and Government House? or even to architecture? While it can’t be an easy job designing a massive structure in an area of quaint two storey Victoriana, the architects have unsuccessfully endeavoured to hide the …

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 …