The Wellington City Council must have known it was going to be picking a hard road to go down when it proposed Variation 11, and sure enough, the District Plan change is due to go to appeal at the Environment Court. Most of our readers will know about it: it’s a variation to permit buildings of a certain size to be constructed on the waterfront, without having to go through the publicly-notified Resource Consent stage. At present, of course, there’s a much more public-friendly situation in place: that every building higher than ground level will require to be notified –…
read the full entryThe joy and sense of fun that is the Wellington Waterfront never ceases to amaze me. Today in the local paper, an expose is made on a number of new / newly released projects for the waterfront, of which I just can’t ignore. Entitled, perhaps a little too zoomorphicaly, “Is that toilet a crayfish or an aardvark?“, the Dom Post unveils attention on a number of brand new proposed features.
Some of them we’ve heard about before, like the WhareWaka, which appears to have a new plan and a new articulated skin (shown below). It looks articulated, with a series of…
read the full entryWe’d hoped to be first to bring you details of the competition on the Outer-T, but the Architectural Centre bet us to it.
Ideas welcome – closes 24 August. Oddly enough, there’s not a thing on the websites of either Wellington Waterfront or the City Council yet. No doubt they’ll catch up sometime. In the mean time, there are more details here.
While I mightn’t understand Auckland’s need for speed to build a party zone for rugby boys; rue the day that some idiot coined the phrase Super-City; and may make a mockery of the glacial speed of traffic up there from time to time: they do have one thing coming on stream in AKL that will leave Welltown for dead. Yes, at long last the memorial to Sir Peter Blake is nearing completion – from the outside at least – and the building is looking gorgeous. The “Blue Water Black Magic – Tribute to Sir Peter Blake” experience is due to…
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 entryIt’s all go down on the waterfront this week: the news keeps flying thick and fast, and we just can’t keep up with the flow! But we’ll try: here’s a catch-up.
First there was the news that the Wharves were falling down – with DomPost giving that story more face time than the war against the Tamils – and a doleful looking Mr Pike lost in a field of rotting wharf timbers. It’s nice to have someone with a Fishy name like Pike in charge of the waterfront: it sounds like he’s in tune with the water and us Fishes. Apparently…
read the full entryFollowing on from the previous post, where we had observed how good Wellington can get on a nice day (not so good today, unfortunately), there were a few photos left over that we just had to use. There seems to be a few simple principles at work here for successful public space design in general, but throughout the waterfront especially.
Always face your seating to the sea and to the sun… (Jan Gehl noted that humans like to sit with their backs to something solid, but it seems in Wellington we trust each other just fine, and like to…
read the full entryThey say it, and you can’t. Here’s proof.
Waitangi Park, multiple award winning and hugely popular outdoor space, for all Wellingtonians. What was all the fuss about then, eh? We love it.
The new waterfront promenade outside the old Herd St Post Office. Most ridiculously priced fish and chips in town, but hey, great spot for people watching.
Shed 5 dining by the waters edge, nary a breath of wind in sight. Well, just a little puff then. One of the world’s most enjoyable waterfronts?
The new Kumutoto bridge. Surprisingly slender. And late afternoon: the sun pours in here. They’re…
read the full entryIt has been announced by the Wellington City Council, that following on from the demise of the proposal for a Hilton Hotel, there will be an ideas competition for the end of the Outer T on Queens Wharf: currently home to an old tin shed, as I’m sure you all know. The Hilton-to-be, as you will recall, was vanquished by the continued badgering of the combined forces of Waterfront Watch and the Civic Trust (go Grey Power!), and no one much seems to have mourned its passing (blogged by Philip back in March). The Hilton’s Auckland architects have left town…
read the full entryIn what appears to be one of Wellington’s more anticipated restaurant openings for years, a branch of the international noodle bar Wagamama has opened in the Meridian building, and already queues are forming out the door: indeed, breaking all Australasian records for turnover in a first week, despite it being the middle of a very bleak winter. It evidently has been a phenomenal success. This is the first (and probably will be the only) branch of Wagamama to open in Wellington – there are already two or three in Auckland, although the chain itself started in London a couple…
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