Do we have too much bureaucracy in NZ, or not enough? Is it too easy to get a building designed and built in our shiny happy little country, or is it really the solid chore and back-breaking task that the Nats would have you believe? While our building standards in NZ may be set at a fairly low point, asking only that we barely scrape past the minimum, at least we have a reasonably responsible to matters where there is an actual risk of loss of life. And we have that RMA thing to safeguard our birds and bees and…
read the full entryTime to get back to talking about architecture. One of the things that the construction slow-down may give us, incidentally, is more time to actually think about architecture – the hectic pace that the architects in our city have been working at, with barely time to pause between designs, has led to a plethora of work of (at times) dubious quality. The designs for one multi-storey apartment building have barely been unveiled to the client before the next site was revealed by the voracious appetite of the patron-developer, and the same design was in many cases seemingly just simply flipped…
read the full entrySo: New Zealand has spoken, and we have a new government about to form. Aunty Helen, head of the world’s first largely women-based government administration, has been axed by the voters, and we are about to go back to a far more male oriented, traditional, white middle-class form of government under the tutelage of John Key. While I lament the lack of any signs of inspiring leadership in the election run-up, in sharp and pointed contrast to the reborn USA electoral scene, the resignation of both Clark and Cullen show that they know as much as the public seem to…
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