Just a short note to alert residents of the Inner City to a meeting for a possible formation of an inner-city Residents Association. It’s on Monday 1st September, at 5.30pm at the Southern Cross Bar in Abel Smith St.
Initially an initiative of Grant Robertson, the Labour candidate for Wellington Central, and echoing a similar initiative from Mark Blumsky, a National MP and former mayor, who was keen on setting up a Cuba St association, it seems that everyone wants to get into the hearts and minds of the residents of the inner city – goodness me, it must…
read the full entryPassing along the waterfront last night, on a wettish, cold, windy Wednesday evening, I was bemused to find Shed 5 packed to the gills with large men in suits – but then I remembered – of course – the Property Council of New Zealand is in town for their annual conference. The theme for this year is Building Succesful Cities, and so its interesting to see who they have speaking, and what they have planned to excite those giants of the NZ property owning world.
Wednesday started off with a range of corporate activities such as clay bird shooting, rifle…
read the full entryYesterday we had a rather interesting talk from Sam Kebbel of Kebbell Daish Architects, discussing Joanna Langford’s The Beautiful and the Damned – a piece currently installed in the Michael Hirschfeld Gallery.
The artwork creates an ethereal urban skyline, pieced together from the glowing windows of unbalanced buildings, with a sharp scale shift provided by the odd street lamp. This is all constructed from the soft glows of backlit computer keyboards, and the odd street level LED – producing a memorable, sublime image of the urban landscape. (more in the introduction)
The stunning use of materials is a great neighbour to Fiona Hall’s…
read the full entryIt’s hard to imagine the joy I felt this morning catching the bus to work and finally seeing someone else actually using a Snapper Card.
I had been quietly trying to convince myself that the seemingly slow uptake of this local version of London’s Oyster card was due to unspent currency of 10-ride bus tickets – but alas there always seemed to be too much hard cash being exchanged between driver and passenger to validate this one. But at least we haven’t (yet) got the problems that the Oyster has, where the encrypted security algorithm technology has just been cracked,…
read the full entryI’ve just found out that Wellington Civic Trust is once again holding its Awards this year, and nominations are open once more: click here. Last held in 2005, perhaps there hasn’t been enough exciting public work for the Trust to have had Awards for the last couple of years – however, surely there are enough to give awards by now. Last time, there was a simple division between the awards, with two: the Civic and Corporate Award, and the Community and Volunteer Award. The former was won by the fantastic Oriental Bay enhancements (such as the Changing Rooms, Walkway, Beach,…
read the full entryThere are still many good signs of a healthy construction industry in Wellington, with a number of apartment projects underway. Two of these under construction at present are interesting as they show such different methods of construction.
One of them, the Piermont apartments, by Stratum Management (Architecture +), took a while to get out of the ground due to basements almost below the water level, and the discovery of the remains of a century old railway stop: the Te Aro station of one of Wellington’s first railways. Massive amounts of below ground work were necessary, necessitating a large hole in…
read the full entryFollowing fast on the footsteps of the previous post on Courtenay Park, which some are labeling as ‘grim’, I’d like to put forward another contender for the title of ‘grim urban park’: yes, that of the SLOAP that is the ‘park’ of the Bypass. I’m not sure that Transit, the designers of mighty roading projects, have really got the hang of designing places for people yet. Seen here, on the edge of the aptly homonymous Karo Park, is an effort at doing some landscaping, with carefully placed traffic, facing into the bypass.
Far be it for me to deride the…
read the full entryThe simple beauty of rusting steel keeps getting better at Courtenay Park. These pictures speak without words:
When the sun is out, the new park gets quite popular, especially on a sunny lunchtime.
read the full entrySo National has pledged to reform the RMA within its first 100 days of office, should it get elected. Some people are getting very excited about that. ACT seems to think this may mean less restrictions on suburban land for housing, and let ‘good’ projects start and finish earlier. National seems to think that key ‘infrastructure’ projects will get a green light with less soul-searching. Labour seems to think that the RMA is just fine as it is, and has no need to change.
If you were elected tomorrow, what would you change in the RMA in your first 100…
read the full entryI’ve just spotted this blank wall being constructed beside the main route into the city from the airport. Facing north, providing a beautiful backdrop for shadow play of pohutukawa, as well as a future venue for no doubt countless mindless scribblings, is a blank wall. Courtesy of the ArcHaus architectural team.
Is this really what we want to be seen from the main road? Is a blank wall the best we can do for a frontage onto the beautiful waters of Evans Bay? Or should we be striving for better for our city? Is there going to be some…
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