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 …

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 …