I can’t believe that people are seriously thinking about this awful proposal. There is a meeting next week to organise a group against this throwback to the 1950s, at St Joseph’s church, on 25th November. Read more about it here. Meantime, those that are in favour (hands up Mayor Kerry and the Transit crew), should ponder this: Newmarket viaduct in Auckland has been transporting cars overhead since 1965, and is about to be enlarged via a total rebuilding, at massive cost, to achieve a single extra lane.

Recently the bridge has come under criticism about the fact that debris flies off the viaduct to busy Newmarket below, seismic susceptibility and that the bridge has been separating in sections to create wide gaps.

Hmm, not so good then. A mere 40 years on, its chocka, and falling down.

It’s also worth considering the Victoria Park Viaduct, which, like the proposed Basin Reserve Viaduct, cuts right across the Park. Again, there are problems with the viaduct, and it is being proposed to be ‘undergrounded’ - over time, with part now, and part in another lifetime. Again with a relevant quote:

The Victoria Viaduct comes under criticism because of how ugly it looks, the lack of stopping space, its traffic capacity and its safety. Numerous accidents have happened; such as vehicles driving through the barriers and into Victoria Park below and the risk of a single crash causing Auckland’s motorway system to turn to chaos.

Hmmm, so again: perhaps these overhead motorways are not such a good idea. Apart from the fact that they create noise, rip the city in two, ruin historic reserves set in basins, etc, they also look ugly as sin and: things fall off. Like trucks.

If the city is really going to do a flyover, then it needs to get a decent bridge designer in, perhaps like Calatrava or the french engineers of the Millau Viaduct, and ensure there are some really good side barriers built in.

However, there really is no need to build a flyover, when an underground route below the basin would be simply achieved, and less obstructive for the city. Or the simplest answer of all: no more roads. It really doesn’t solve anything. Last picture today, is of another popular public figure with a penchant for road-building: turning the first sod.

Yes, it’s true, the Broderick St facade has a small area of wild criss-cross things in a manner fast becoming common in recent Wellington building proposals. All that aside, what is most obvious about the elevations is the need for the architects (Buchan Group) to keep to below a maximum building height in the area. Yes, I know its a vital pre-requisite to avoid the scheme being pinged into a Notified category, but for goodness sake: Johnsonville is a hollow! You could break through by a floor or two in the middle, and no one could tell a thing. Anyway, its all as flat topped as a sailors cap. The plan may tell us more:

Well, as noted in our previous post, there is indeed a feature we described as: 

a glazed atrium thingy over a confusingly shaped central walkway to help you lose track of time and the way out,    

and in this case it appears as a lozenge shaped food court and a horse-shoe shaped atrium. The architect describes this more politely:

A two level galleria style retail core with generous floor to floor dimensions affording high shopfronts for tenants, appropriately located major tenants to anchor to each level, large penetrations or voids between floors to maximise visibility within the spaces and extensive roof lights over to introduce natural light and an awareness of external conditions.  

Its all a vast improvement on the present scheme that is for sure, as can be seen by this helpful before and after shot of the entry to the Mall from Johnsonville Road’s more northern end. There is a vast porch suspended out over the footpath in a grand gesture that is done so well in more bustling metropolis, although I have my suspicions about it’s usefulness as a protective device against the southerly (it appears that a second canopy appears lower down the legs of the column as a more prosaic, functional gesture). Still: it does certainly offer a sense of grandeur notably missing from the present scheme, and for that I thoroughly applaud it (or would if I could, but Fish don’t have hands). 

There’s a car that’s been parked in front of the building that’s been there for a long time and surely would have been towed away by now. Sorry, shouldn’t jest: these viewshot things are vitally important to get accurate. So here’s another one, from a nearby footpath on the other side of the motorway:

Small picture I know, but still, you can see that it is hardly obtrusive, and seems to nestle into the hollow quite nicely. The final picture we’ll reproduce here today is a sun-study from mid-winter, which casts some nice shadows on the plans so we can actually see them alright, and indeed right down into the horseshoe shaped atrium over the double height of shopping. The present railway station is still sitting to the left of the picture, untouched: presumably waiting for the Council to step in and take an interest, or Kiwi Rail or OnTrack perhaps. Whatever / whoever: the architects claim that the scheme will allow full seamless interaction between the Bus, Train and Mall. All very good. But then it hit me:

Where is the housing? The Fish is sure that when this area was discussed initially with the WCC, there was a strong desire to integrate housing into a revamped Johnsonville, by looking at some rooftop dwellings - and by some, the intention was for: quite a lot. There must be a certain gnashing of teeth at the plans from certain members of the planning team - despite their best wish lists, there is not a skerrick of housing to be seen atop the rooftops here. I can’t exactly blame the developer in the current climate - there was a vast amount of parking to squeeze onto the site, and a tight height limit: and besides, apartments are difficult to give away at present, given the shortage of available readies.  But it is as if the concept of living above the shop has scared the developer off from trying - or is it the fear that the happy J’ville suburbanite might not wish to purchase an apartment above the Mall? Its a common enough scenario overseas - well, Europe and Asia, if not the USA. The Council’s own development plan for Johnsonville proposes that developments should: promote the opportunities for mixed-use development in the town centre with apartments on upper storeys, including through increased maximum building heights and other incentives. Clearly that hasn’t happened here - whether the developer got cold feet over breaking the height limit, or the council didn’t offer enough of the ‘other incentives’ we’ll never know. So tell us what you think of the Mall, and if you know anyone in Johnsonville who hasn’t seen the application yet, then please encourage them to visit this site, and comment on the comments area below.

And here’s an update: an extra plan and a section for LAS (oh ye of little faith, I’m not lost in the mall yet), with the section at least showing that you can walk straight through from the pedestrian crossing on one side, to the train station on the other side, although this funky atrium thing is one floor up - you’ll be drawn up by the escalators, pulling you through the unique retail opportunities till you get to the roof top carpark and escape:

Now the thing of course is: assuming that you have made your way through the labyrinth of women’s speciality clothes stores, shoe shops, sports training gear shops, and past the large major anchor stores and the mini major anchor stores, you’ll find yourself at the Train Station, which has not been upgraded, and the west side of the store - which will look something like this:

School of Architecture & Design, Victoria University (the Red building, Vivian St) Final Year Degree Show: open for one more week.

Massey University School of Art & Design - Exhibition : Blow.08 - open from November 7 - 22, at the old Dominion Museum building.

WelTec final year Interior Design - Exhibition : Tangent - from November 7, 2008, at Chaffers Park Gallery.

And of course, if you want to take a business card and offer some of this young talent a job, I’m sure they would be most obliged.

(image courtesy of Johnson Tong at Victoria Uni - apologies for poor reproduction)

A personal favourite of the Fish, showing that student talent can go far compared to the mainstream architects (and when unfettered by commercial restraints), is Johnson Tong’s scheme for the reworking of the Overseas Passenger Terminal. Some great points: you can see under it, so it won’t disturb the view; you can sail under it, so you can get out to sea quicker; and you can actually tie ocean-going liners up there, which is what the thing is meant to be there for anyway. Now that seems a whole lot better than a rack of apartments for rich yachties!

Cartoon courtesy of the fantastic Trace Hodgson

However: seeing as this is an urban blog, and not a political commentary: what then does this mean for Wellington architecture and urban life?

On the face of it, not a lot. There’s no inherent reason that Key will change the landscape more than Clarke, when it comes to building a physical presence outside the confines of Government. When each was quizzed before the election about what their favourite buildings were, Clarke said she liked the row of (former) merchant’s houses in Symonds St in Auckland, while Key voted for the Skytower. Phallic connections to the enormous upright prick that is John Key The Skytower aside, that does also show a preference for new, big, thrusting, modern architecture in preference to the quieter, more calmly cultured heritage of the old houses. You could say that therefore there is more chance for new, modern buildings, and perhaps a doing away with some of the clunky old bits of heritage we have sitting around the place. You could also note that both sets of favourite buildings are in Auckland, and that Wellington doesn’t get a look-in. Is that symptomatic that Auckland is once again in line for more dominance than Wellington? We shouldn’t worry too much in Wellington Central - the electorate has, I think, 3 representatives, with only Stephen Franks and his gold VW missing out, so Central should still be well represented in Parliament. Only one architectural thing is sure so far: National has said that “The Architect of Labour’s 1980’s Economic Plans” (Roger Douglas, not actually an architect, nor even an architectural draughtsman) will not be in Cabinet.

Prime Minister Key has however previously made his intentions clear with a well-reported crackdown on numbers of Wellington bureaucrats likely to happen. A simple capping of bureaucrat numbers will achieve some reduction via natural attrition, but there is also a good chance that a far larger swathing cut of some departments may occur, and arguably that could be a good thing (except, of course, for those about to lose their jobs). So what may be the targets of Key’s upcoming cuts? Department of Women’s Affairs and Maori / Pacific Island Affairs could arguably be in for a nasty surprise, depending on how gender / race specific Key wants to be. Winston has gone for good, so the Minister for Courtenay Place - sorry, Minister for Wine and Food - sorry again - Minister for Racing and Foreign Affairs - look, who knows what he really did, when not fishing for donations of helicopters or backhanders to his brother’s trust fund. Anyway: do we really need a Minister for Racing? Should that be the same as a Minister for Gambling? Or Minister of Day-Trading? John Key himself could be up for that one.

My pick for the axe in a big way is the Government Department that has been around for the shortest time, and achieved the least: Building and Housing. Five hundred plus paper-pushing numpties with no apparent knowledge of the building industry nor any apparent achievements over the past 3 years, would seem to be a prime candidate for the chop if Key wanted to make big changes fast. DBH’s predecessor, the BIA, made do with less than 20 people, and achieved just as much. But certainly, the continued well-being of Wellington architectural practices may be about to reverse, if the recent continual stream of government fitout projects dries up to a trickle. Much of that has been driven by the Labour government’s desire to have all government departments in Greenstar rated buildings - if that incentive is taken away, what will happen to the current churn in office space?

On the other hand, Key’s plan is to reform the Resource Management Act fairly pronto, “within the first 100 days”, and that could have major effects on the built fabric of the city. Certainly there appears to be an interest in getting some large infrastructure projects underway (with toll roads likely, could Transmission Gully really still be in with a chance?), although the extent that the RMA is woven into every part of our national legislation may mean that winding back it’s control could take far more energy than our John has planned for. 

Photo courtesy of Jake Faulkner on Flickr. And Wellington’s best comes out on Guy Fawkes night, as the waterfront fills up, the roof parties get going (neighbours greeting each other from their Mt Victoria rooftop locations for the first time again since last year), and Oriental Parade opens up their expensive sea views and we get to see them instead. But possibly never before had the notion of celebrating Guy Fawkes Day seemed so inappropriate, so English, so totally pointless. So why do we keep celebrating the day when someone tried but didn’t quite succeed in blowing up the British Parliament - some 400 years ago. So he was a Catholic - so what? So he didn’t quite succeed in giving the Brits a well-deserved rocket - so what? The only Wellingtonian still banging on about that is Hector Westfold of Haitaitai, who no doubt was out burning an effigy of the Pope as he has done for the last 400 years

Yesterday for me was all about Obama this and Obama that, a total Obama-rama (ramalamadingdong).

Photo courtesy of Delta Niner. And that all seems a lot more reason to celebrate - the day that America dared enough to grow up and have hope in the future, to have hope in itself again.

Dare I say, ten hours into election day, that our “white knight” came in the form of a multi-racial, articulate Harvard graduate whose own family looks like a page from the United Nations facebook. A man whose father is Kenyan, whose sister is half Asian, whose brother-in-law is Chinese Canadian and whose grandparents are as white as the Kansas plains. A man whose mother gave him all the books of religion to read in the hopes that he would recognize that everyone has something beautiful to contribute. A man who only half a century ago could have been lynched for the words he speaks today.

Lets hope it lasts. And lets ditch Guy Fawkes for a well deserved rest, and celebrate Obama Day in the future. Normal transmission of Wellington urban matters will be resumed shortly, once we’ve got our own, less exciting election out of the way. 

We hasten to add that of course, this Fish Cash Scandal has nothing to do with the Eye of the Fish, and that our electoral integrity remains unimpuned in New Zealand. Although, it does give us a good chance, on the eve of the US election, to run this delightful picture, of a soon to be Ex-President. Thank goodness for that.

Seems kind of apt for our situation too: come on Helen, you must be thinking: time to hand over the reins and let someone else sort out this enormous nappy full of crap the country is in.

Now how is that possible? Apparently the Wellington City Council has asked an “Independent Planning Consultant” (David Hill) to produce a special report by the end of November, just on the very question of whether this project should be Publicly Notified, or just allowed to slip under the net and be processed by Council officers just like an extension to your bike shed. Surely, for it to be Non-Notified, the current 10,000m2 site would be remaining much the same size. Surely, if it was to double in size, that would trigger some kind of public interest clause? But what if it was to quadruple in size - to nearer 40,000m2 - surely there would be no question as to whether the Public should be allowed to look at the scheme and have a say?

The DNZ website says remarkably little about the project: 

The Centre is attractive, and the buildings in good condition; the Centre enjoys strong trading performance. The strategic plan for the asset is to redevelop to a regional shopping centre integrated with a transport hub and upgraded existing railway station.   

How’s that for bland and non-commital? The Architect’s website says even less: nothing at all, to be precise. Thanks Buchan Group. I’m not sure what they’re all scared of. The National Party wants the redevelopment to go ahead. No doubt people in Johnsonville wants the development to go ahead. But the Dom Post is refreshingly blunt in its appraisal, when it notes the Resource Consent application freely admits that a revitalised Johnsonville Shopping Centre would “suck $44 million from the tills of downtown Wellington retailers in its first year”. So, in a manner of speaking, the new Mall will suck, big time - at least in terms of cash, if not its architectural aspirations as well.

Now some may say that the present J’ville is such an abhorently bad piece of townscape anyway, that anything that could be done would be an improvement - and they may well be right. Its currently like a gaping wound of asphalt rollocking across an undulating field of back yards to retail outlets, a thin ribbon of retail backed by a fairly shapeless morass of carparking. As far as I understand, the new (4 times larger) mall will build over much more of the present carparking, and so one assumes that the carparking needs will also be 4 times larger as well (at least 1000 cars). There will be a large plane of carparking overhead, rather than underneath (too expensive and the levels won’t work), and a separate carparking building as well, as J’ville folk are keen on parking right outside the door, and appear to have an aversion to stairs.

There will be, as sure as eggs are eggs (around $4 / dozen I believe), a glazed atrium thingy over a confusingly shaped central walkway to help you lose track of time and the way out, some large anchor stores that will look ugly from outside, the car deck at level 1, and an almighty traffic snarlup if the Westfield in Petone is anything to go by. But will there be more? Will there be, for instance, a swath of swanky apartments over the top, as indicated to be a desirable thing by the WCC in their recent Suburban Centres dialogues? How will the new integrated and (much needed) upgraded train station and / or bus station work to allow shoppers to use public transport? Will there be a decent pedestrian management plan so that the considerable vehicular traffic through poor old J’ville gets better to walk around, instead of worse? Wouldn’t the simple and best way to let us all know that, be for the plans to be Publicly Notified, so we can all have a look and see for ourselves? 

It’s all so predictable, and in theory so avoidable: if the market doesn’t get so swept up in itself, so carried away with the power of its own excesses, then we wouldn’t have the crazy booms, and wouldn’t have the crazy falls. Luckily for us in NZ, so we think, we rarely get that carried away. By and large we don’t have the crazy ego-maniacs building towers, and so in theory at least, we should avoid the catastrophic falls as well. Unfortunately, that one doesn’t seem to apply: we may not get the biggie ups, but we sure get the downside blues as bad as the next country anyway.

There’s another old adage, often stated, never proven, that there is a direct link between the state of the economy and the length of a woman’s mini-skirt.

Is there any truth in that, and if so, does it apply to Wellington? The theory is that as the economy booms and rises, so does the length of leg exposed below a skirt. The change in the 1920s from long flowing robes at the start of the decade, to daring above the knee fashions as the decade came to an end, coincided directly with the rise of the economy and the rise of the skyscraper. Come the Great Depression and then the Second World War, and hemlines became much more demure once more. Skirts shortened again in the 60s, only to lengthen again in the 70s, and rise again in the 80s shortly before the 87 Crash. 

But what about this time? Are hemlines sky high? Is it possible to garner a gander by gender: to gauge the state of the world’s economy by casually eyeing the hem-length of a typical Wellington woman? My reaction is: of course not - there’s no such thing as a typical Wellington woman anyway, and besides, the wind is too great a factor to risk blowing up anyone’s skirt for them to be a feasible fashion indicator. The typical Wellington walk, it would seem, is to have one hand holding down the edge of your skirt - one wonders what women did in years past when they had to hold onto a hat with the other hand too. But of course, fashion (or the slavish following of it) is dead now anyway, as proclaimed on the cover of the latest 1am magazine. Christine Rankin seems to have been the last public figure to have brazenly gone forward into Lambton Quay with legs exposed, and yet she flew the coop some years ago now, spangly earrings and cleavage shining in the moonlight as she speed off down nowhere lane. However, as we move into November, and into summer, perhaps hem length is something that keen followers of the economy should be keeping a fisheye out for.

Nestling into the rear of the Maritime Tower site, and indeed wrapping around the 3 remaining quarters of the block it sits on, this tower proposal will be one of the more prominent and important developments in the City: we need major redevelopments like this so that the construction industry doesn’t hit the skids.  The site has been asking for redevelopment for some time now: the current  tower rises high on Featherston St but has negligible height on the eastward podium, and the tower is stitched in to the base via a form of giant concrete brise-soleil cross stitch.

The current tower (anyone know who designed it?) features a rooftop finished with a curiously crinkly, crenalated construction hiding the lift motor rooms, one of my favourites in the city, and an identical albeit possibly unintended inspiration for a much lauded house by Stevens Lawson in Auckland (allegedly no connection - but if so, how tragic that just when this building’s design has become hot again, it gets knocked down).

The architects are of course Athfield Architects, the obligatory architects de jour, de annum, and indeed de century if their design abilities are anything like their apparent party throwing abilities. So lets have a look at the design - what’s happening on the site?

It appears that the existing building is to be razed to the ground, and recreated anew, allowing clean new floor plates and new services in place of the present 70s limpid tower, busting through the height limits (so it would seem) and surpassing the height of the Maritime House (itself 2 stories taller than permitted). Despite this, however, the building appears to be imaged not as one new tower, but instead visually broken up into 3 or more separate parts.

A 19-storey tower would front Featherston and Waring Taylor streets, a 10-storey wing would face Featherston and Ballance streets and a 15-storey wing would face Customhouse Quay. The budget for the project would be more than $90 million    

.

From what we’ve seen so far, the design emphasis has been put on the Customhouse Quay side, and it is there that I’m confused, ever so slightly. Or is it that the building is confused? Having gone from a fairly straightforward modernist assemblage of rectilinear block forms down the Waring Taylor side, albeit an assortment of verticals, horizontals, and glazing sailing past in a Foundation Cartier manner, the building suddenly explodes in a giant crinkle or fracture to the east.

While the architects must have been working on the scheme for months, if not years, it must still come as an intense irritation that only recently their opposition, WAM, have proposed a similar fractured facade to the proposed refurb of the National Library. While the National Library scheme appears to be driven by desires for self-justification via a populist proletarian input mechanism of flickering photoshop images and screeds of text to make it contextual, this new tower scheme has no agenda to put forward, no barrow to push: no need to break windows and cause a ruckus. No, this is just the last remaining corner of the building where rationalist thoughts can be relaxed, and permission be granted to go a little bit crazy.

As always in architecture, nothing new really exists: this has all been done before, as evidenced by the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies, recently opened in Chicago (another ‘windy’ city). The same fracture of the glazed facade has been attempted there by Kreuck + Sexton Architects, far more exuberantly (and no doubt far more expensively) than Athfield’s are attempting here. The design models of the Spertus are even more elucidating, showing that a far more ambitious facade was originally planned, although sadly not eventuating. Somehow - perhaps since Liebeskind has been pulling off the fractured Jewish pattern for his museums and towers, it feels like there is a lot more behind the windows of the Spertus than there is behind the walls of the AMP tower on Customhouse Quay.

The Spertus claim that the Jewish faith is ‘multi-faceted’ - what’s the reason here? Is appropriating a form such a bad thing? Why can’t we have fun with our window cleaning? Why not?

Perhaps the better question to be asking is: Why? While we here at the Fish quite like the rumpled (stilt) skin look of the eastern facade, and the overhanging glass edge (that Athfields have done so well on Chews Lane), why do we have such a tedious assemblage of orthogonalism to the south? What if the building was fractured and fractalated all over, in a pre-”the big one”-earthquake look? Is there a rationale for swopping so quickly from between  Dr Jekyl one one side to Mr Hyde on the other? If so, then it spoils the look by being able to see both sides at the same time. Or is this more like a mild-mannered Clark Kent showing a respectable pair of spectacles to the accountants on Featherston St, while rapidly spinning into his skin-tight costume on Customhouse Quay? Can we expect more whizz-bang going on behind the facade, or is beauty really only just skin-deep?     

The film “Ian Athfield, Architect of Dreams” will be shown at a later stage on late night TVNZ, no doubt at a time guaranteed to be unhelpful to all. Still, it’s nice to see another film being made on a New Zealand Architect, and focusing mostly on Athfield’s extensive production of severely iconic (and at times deeply ironic) New Zealand architecture. It’s the second documentary made on Athfield and his work - he is, after all, one of the few architectural ‘names’ that the public would recognise in New Zealand, and we hope that the producers will look to expand their subject range to explore other homegrown architects as well. The main documentary was preceded by a short film, made by a dedicated Fan: it’s clear that those that know him, absolutely adore him and his architecture. The rest of Wellington’s architects must just be thankful that when Ath takes a rare break from winning all the work in town, he certainly knows how to throw a good party.