It has been announced by the Wellington City Council, that following on from the demise of the proposal for a Hilton Hotel, there will be an ideas competition for the end of the Outer T on Queens Wharf: currently home to an old tin shed, as I’m sure you all know. The Hilton-to-be, as you will recall, was vanquished by the continued badgering of the combined forces of Waterfront Watch and the Civic Trust (go Grey Power!), and no one much seems to have mourned its passing (blogged by Philip back in March). The Hilton’s Auckland architects have left town…
read the full entryWellington has long had an ambivalent attitude to alternative means of transport unloved in other cities – we still have trolley buses (long absent from Auckland or Christchurch), we have a cable car (NZ’s and one of the world’s few commuter vertical transporters), and the cops here seem to turn a blind eye to youths driving scooters, sidewinders or skateboards.
In most major cities of the world the sight of a dreadlocked MP riding down the road on a skateboard on the way to Parliament would have been a major story, but here Nandoor Tanczos made only a brief mention…
read the full entryIn the line of an old Abba song, The Winner takes it All, and so it was in the 2008 Wellington Civic Trust awards last night. A friendly Fish-monger sends in this report from the ceremony in Te Papa:
The evening started off promptly, no time for drinkies (or Studio Pacific – who missed out on the news they had won the first prize of the evening by a good 5 minutes!), before leaping straight into the Awards ceremonies. First up was the award for best building in Wellington (constructed in the last 3 years). Nominated by members of the…
read the full entryIt has been said that if you want a job done right, then do it yourself. The government seems to have taken this to heart at present, by announcing that a competition for an affordable home has been launched: one possible sub-text being that as they have no way of making housing affordable, perhaps you’d like to design yourself one. Its not to be sneezed at though – there’s an $8,000 first prize, and a guarantee that the winning entry WILL be built. Open to students, professionals, and all comers, the affordable home is to be bought in at under…
read the full entryAfter a lengthy (some might say excruciating) out-pouring about her experience of the ridiculous difficulties of building (home renovations and building consents), Joanne Black has recently decide to public pronounce on two more fascinating aspects of the architectural world. Firstly, that the building process is too easy for other people (yes the old “Not-in-my-backyard-especially-when-it’s-Thorndon” syndrome), and secondly, the right for architects to describe their projects using language in a way which is at odds with her own journalistic purity.
The launch of this discussion began a couple of week’s ago in Black’s regular Listener column (6-12 September 2008). It began:…
In the heart of Wellington’s old Chinatown, namely the narrow low-scale neighbourhood of Haining St, there is one of the few trees that are growing in Te Aro, nestling happily in the lee of an also fairly non-descript warehouse building. Until fairly recently the site was the home of a film unit, a student flat, and parking for assorted businesses, until it was sold and resold and eventually ended up in the hands of the property spruikers known as Rich Mastery: organizers of ‘property seminars’ – otherwise known as a way to “get rich quick”. Unfortunately for the majority that…
read the full entryAnother week, another apartment development. Sometimes they’re good, sometimes they’re bad: sometimes it seems they’re just sent to test the market. There are two more recent apartment buildings being promoted at present: one publicly notified, the other trying to sneak in under the radar. Let’s look at the notified proposal first – as comments are due to the Council by 4 September.
This notified consent application is a real test of the developers nerve, and of the Council’s will power. What do you do with a site nestling near the base of the tallest building in the capital? Surely just about…
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