Poor old Auckland – even though I can’t stand the place, it is almost getting my vote of sympathy this week. First up, some good news: they’ve banned Vuvuzelas from Eden Park. Personally I think they should bring in a mandatory shoot-on-sight policy for anyone found wielding one, but that might be a little harsh for a $2 piece of plastic.
But secondly, time for some Brickbats. I heard on the radio this morning someone blaming “Wellington” for the latest stuff-up on the beleagured Queens Wharf debacle / shed wrangle / utter series of unmitigated cock-ups.
…
Top prize in the NZIA New Zealand Architecture Awards last night in Auckland went to Ironbank, by RTA Studio. Fantastic building, stunningly iconographic, and well-deserved. It’s a tour-de-force of the art of the architect – yes, agreed that perhaps the structural logic could be argued to be, shall we say, “overly complex” – but its a building that you just can’t help but like. The dark, rusty red exterior takes the cake as well, with the sun hitting it it glows, and the steel cladding (Corten?) has a crispness that goes well with the boxy shape. Massive congratulations to RTA,…
read the full entryAah well, sounds like no one quite fell for it yesterday – the prospect must have been just too outrageous. Although: weirder things have happened. Like what, I hear you ask? Well, like the National government passing legislation in one day to abolish a democratically elected environment board. I mean, isn’t that just the littlest bit anti-democratic? Just the teensiest bit like what fascists dictators do, such as Fiji’s Bainimarama, or umm, like Germany’s Nazi party in their distant past? I know, I know, I mentioned Nazi – but really, what is the point of having a democracy if the…
read the full entryIt’s times like this that I feel quite sorry for Aucklanders. Not only are they having the mutha of all political conglomerations shoved down their necks without so much as a by-your-leave, and not only are they being stung with governance by 7 quangos over which they will have no control, and not only do they have an incoherent waterfront and no sign of fixing it, and not only do they have the prospect of John Banks lording it over them yet again, but they also have the prospect of Pods invading their space.
Yes, I know that we’re all…
read the full entryPerhaps we don’t need to be mean to Auckland and its architecture, as it seems to be quite good at beating itself up.
The AAA has been running a competition called Urban Eye, for a written entry on Auckland Architecture. We’re sorry we missed it. Some of the entries are so good, they could almost have been written by the Fish. But no: we’re innocent. Mind you, damn fine moderately average writing, not just for the Winning Entry (on the AAA site, and reproduced below) but also the Second and Third prize entries. Nice bit of…
I wasn’t going to write anything more this week, but the latest shenanigans in Auckland have me chortling with laughter. So-called Super City – you can keep it. A more disorganised bunch couldn’t be found. But then what can you expect if you have John Banks and Murray McCully in the same room, making decisions on the future of Auckland based on the needs of a rugby competition under two years away?
Perhaps Banks and McCully have got it right – sit back, take a chill pill, and do the competition again, but this time get it…
And so here we are again, with another week of deluded and denuded, grumpy, sour-faced, anorexic models prancing around the Viaduct, under the impression that Auckland Fashion Week is of global importance.
Today, hold your breath, Pamela Anderson arrives to make a major fashion statement, with a range of swimwear that is not made of fur or leather.
read the full entryThere’s a fair amount of non-stop hoo-hah going on about Auckland’s proposed “Super City” status, and it’s time we Wellingtonians started to fight back. Nonewithstanding the fact that Auckland is really barely a city at all, and more just a collection of shopping centres and some nice swimming beaches connected by motorways, Auckland is somehow perceived of by some misguided few as being a proper place to live.
Despite having a downtown as attractive as an Asian brothel and
read the full entryIt was great to see the Dominion Post actually use some of its reporters to explore some of the local issues in the Weekend, with a two whole (almost) full pages on developments on the Wellington waterfront. The WCC is currently in the throes of evaluating further submissions on Variation 11 (regarding the Waterfront), which, rather confusingly to me, comes about 7 years after the Variation 17 debacle erupted onto Wellington’s radar. 11 comes before 7? How does that work? Does WCC have a time machine, or did they helpfully leave an empty slot in the schedule? Or do they…
read the full entryThere’s a small town some hour or so north of Wellington, by commercial jet, called Auckland. Small town, big suburbs, not much of a city. Normally they don’t make it onto the Eye of the Fish web cam, but then again, they have 2 harbours whereas we just have one, and that makes my tiny flippers quiver. The news for Auckland today means I feel for them, in a fishy kind of way.
Not because they have John Banks as a mayor – they were silly enough to vote for him – twice – so they deserve whatever they get.…
read the full entry