Civic News

I’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, and Mural), while the later was won by Carl Gifford with his (to me) excresence of old boulders and scrap iron in Happy Valley. Awards will be made on 18 September: this year the categories are much wider, with categories for best Building, Heritage, Environmental, Street Art, and Public Space.

Some curious categories there perhaps - there is a separate nomination for best Sculpture, with a fine selection of nominations of Wellington’s incredible sculptural record in recent years. So: Street Art then: do they really mean graffitti? Wildest Tag? Best Wildstyle? Fanciest Paste-Up? I would have

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Construction methodologies

There 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 the ground for Piermont and its neighbour Monument, and the casting of a thick water tight slab. Above ground however the construction is proving much speedier going, with an interesting method of construction: concrete inner shear walls and then a relatively lightweight lattice of thin steel columns to secure the outer perimeter and support the composite steel/concrete floors. Scaffold cloth is making it difficult to get good views through, but one thing is clear: the zigzag outer edge of the project will be a striking effect on the facade. Rather than

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Te Karo Park

Following 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 abilities of other landscape designers, but I have a feeling that these seats are not going to get much use. Has anyone ever been seen using it? The saddest thing is: the one on the other side of the crossing is even worse. It made me so depressed that I couldn’t even bear to take its picture. At least this has a small shrubbery behind it.

It’s a firm argument that landscape design should be left up to landscape architects, and not tackled by roading engineers. So here is the latest park designed by (arguably)

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Courtenay Park update

The 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. 

Resource Management Act: Discuss

So 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 days in office?  

Banalitecture

I’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 great and beautiful structure on top, or have we already had the masterstroke on this work of architecture already?  

Wellington Construction corpses

The DomPost reported recently that Wellington Construction Ltd has bit the dust, owing various creditors money as it dissolved into a pile of construction rubble. We’re saddened by that, but its not completely unexpected: you run with wolves, you might just get bitten: although in this case its not really clear who is doing the biting. The saviour of Wellington football club Phoenix, our favourite spiky-haired developer Terry Serepisos has been hit by collateral damage - WCL were building Terry’s Century City development, leaving it in a state of limbo. Perhaps it may even have a a roll-on effect on the next Serepisos project in Dixon St. So, is this the start of the end of Wellington’s construction boom, or is it completely unrelated? 

Maybe we just leave you to make your own mind up. Terry Pinfold, the head of WCL, was an experienced contractor: 

“Pinfold made his name as commercial manager for Mainzeal in the 1990s when he was associated with projects such as moving the Museum Hotel, refurbishing the St James Theatre and building the Moa Point sewage treatment plant. In 1998 he set up the Wellington office of Auckland-based Hartner Construction. When Hartner went into liquidation in 2001,

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Jolly Green Giants

In a break away from discussing the whys and wherefores of a proposed small road to the north of Wellington, lets return for a moment to the heart of the city to present and discuss a building proposal by The Wellington Company. 

The building, designed by local architects Architecture +, is proposed as the new home for Telecom in Wellington, as reported by NBR and the DomPost earlier this week, although in typical non-helpful fashion, neither acknowledged who the architect was.

Also being marketed recently are glassy new proposals situated between Lambton Quay and Kate Sheppard Place, just next to the bus-station,  which are an update on a previous scheme, by the same architects, as originally reported almost a year ago by WellUrban. Some hillside dwellers aren’t going to be getting much sleep if all these projects come off… 

Telecom have been on the hunt for some time for a new base in the capital, to concentrate their staff - at present distributed in several buildings around Wellington, including on Jervois Quay and also in Tory St. Those avid property watchers amongst us will have noticed that Ian Cassells, head of the Wellington Company, bought the

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Boondoggle Gully

Following on from our recent post dissing the likelihood of the “Transmission Gully” project ever getting off the ground, Transit made a big splash with a 4 page advert in the local rag (sorry DomPost, but your quality has been on a solid downwards trajectory lately and you no longer deserve the epithet of national newspaper), setting out improvements: a “new route” (which seems to be “using the gully floor” instead of “half way up the bottom of a steep slope”), a reduction in the number of intersections, and a confirmation that it would be 4 lanes (ie 2 lanes each way). Somehow from that there is a saving of over $235 million, certainly nothing to be sneezed at. Why, that would get you one and a half new light rail systems (a relative snip at $140 million) in central Wellington, right there! And there’s the rub: Mayor Kerry is quoted on the front page as saying that Transmission Gully was still in Never-Never Land, and that unless central government stumps up with another $600 million, it isn’t going to go ahead. It’s worth noting that the definition of boondoggle not only includes: work or activity that …

Dude, where’s my gas station?

There’s something curious going on in Wellington at present, with a reduction in the number of gas stations going on. Perhaps it is not something to be too upset about, and maybe it is just the start of a well deserved end to an urban design form of none too exciting character, but there seems to be a distinct inclination to demolish old gas stations, and not commission new ones. Is this the start of a new urban phenomenom? Being an urban soul who doesn’t venture far into the horrors of the suburbs, I understand from far flung friends in fairer fields that gas stations line the routes home to suburbs like uh, north, and south. Who knows, perhaps even east and west have them too.But in the city, like corner dairies in the foothills of the Hutt Valley, gas stations are shutting up their central city doors and not coming back. Oh sure, its no big deal perhaps, and there are still 2 or 3 central city sites belonging to BP and Shell which obviously chew up a fair bit of the petrol being pumped out to Wellington’s commuters, but it seems that most of the sites are relocating …