I think that I last heard the phrase “Granny Flat” used way back in the 1970s, before the term PC had been invented. But it is back with a vengeance this week, as a new rule has been announced: you are now allowed to build an Additional Dwelling Unit (ADU) on your property, up to 70m2 in size, without having to ask for permission from anybody….
I hasten to add that no, this does not mean that the Eye of the Fish has gone bankrupt, nor has the entire city of Wellington (situated on the edge of the great fish eye of the harbour), but instead, completely predictably, the stupid underground location of Willis Lane and Holey Moley beneath the BNZ tombstone / State Insurance building / What is it this week…
There is a very sober message in the pictures and videos coming out of Myanmar and Thailand, after their 7.7 earthquake. A shallow quake, similar to what we expect to receive here one day, but hopefully we do not fare so badly. I doubt that any quake has been studied so closely before – so many videos coming from the tall building that collapsed. At first…
Another week, another week of chronic stupidity from the Council. It seems hard to fathom, given the amount of flack that Tory has weathered over the last couple of years, but they seem hell-bound on doing stupid things yet again, and spending money that they do not have, on things that are not necessary. Sigh….. This time the fresh stupidity is the response to the call…
I couldn’t decide what to call the post today, as events seem to cover all the options available to us. Things in the city seem to be playing out as a farce every day, so much so that it becomes a soap opera, or a sit-com like Brooklyn Nine Nine, only with more comedy and less pulling of guns. Situations that are merely farcical in Nine…
There is a movement that is growing rapidly, for reasons unknown, that is slowly colouring our urban outlook. It reminds me of the old adage that goes: “A doctor can bury their mistakes, but an architect can only grow ivy.” And when your building is 10 or 12 stories high, then the form of ivy that grows that high, is randomly-distributed, assorted colours of cladding. It…
I must confess that yesterday I laughed considerably and quite loudly, at the report that Simpleton Brown received, informing him that spending a billion or two drilling two new tunnels under / through Wellington was actually going to make the traffic slower, not faster. Well, duh! I’ve been saying for quite some time that putting in a new Terrace Tunnel in, to speed up the amount…
The world is a silly place at the moment, with an over-inflated orange sock puppet stealing the airwaves far too much at present, so I thought I would have a post about something else – like a musical interlude. What could go wrong if we have a brief look at the Emmys? Grammys? Oscars? Silver Scrolls? After all, one of the songs was called “The Architect”,…
Like the rest of the Wellington Architectural Cognoscenti, I went to a special Architectural Centre showing of The Brutalist in the weekend, because I do love me some nice hard concrete edges. Harder than 60mPa, if you know what I mean. It is a film that has got Hollywood talking, having been nominated for many Academy Awards, if that’s the sort of thing that blows your…
Carnage. American Carnage, to be specific. That’s what DJ Rump announced eight years ago to the day, and what he will deliver in buckets over the next four years. It’s deja vu all over again. I know, I know, this blog is meant to be about Wellington and Urban Design and Architecture, and yet here I am talking about the orange Rumplestiltskin and his infantile, egotistical,…