Maximus
1 Min Read

As the sun was shining and glinting in a wonderful golden sheen off all the buildings in the weekend, the Fish went for another exploration, in search of lost architecture. Can anyone name this little frontier town? It’s seen better times…. There is a whole street of mostly boarded up buildings, and not a whole lot more… … I’ll give you a hint: it’s in New…

Maximus
3 Min Read

There has been an assertion lately, that this blog is, as the title indicates, “a post-industrial dildo, violently thrusting its way into Internet obscurity”. D Sauerteig (whoever that may be – Sauerteig is the German word for Sourdough, so surely a pseudonym for Kim Dot Com….) then went on to say: “You need to learn how to write less stilted and overly constructed articles. The crap…

Maximus
5 Min Read

So the big news of the week, in Wellington at least (if we ignore the wars in Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Ukraine, etc), is the proposal for a large convention centre and accompanying Hilton Hotel smack bang in the middle of the city. The City Council will be voting on it this week, but it’s not out for public consultation. While it feels a little trite to…

Maximus
2 Min Read

A slight detour this week away from Wellington, on an exploration up country. I went to Feilding, not entirely sure why, and on trying to escape, found myself at a most remarkably named Co-Operative Dairy – the Pakeha Butter Company of 1893. I was intrigued, because I had thought that the name Pakeha was more of a 20th Century tag for white folk, rather than 19th…

Maximus
2 Min Read

For several years now, one of the cornerstones of the Cuba Mall has been pretty much a derelict wreck. The old Deka store, a brand from so long ago that most teenagers won’t have even a glimmer of recognition for it, has been slowly rotting away, with the upper floors largely abandoned to the pigeons. The building is an earthquake prone risk, and maintenance levels are…

Maximus
6 Min Read

The following project has been a long while in the making – either a couple of decades, or a couple of thousand years, depending on your take on it. Its a long way from here, but ancient Druid customs and long-forgotten burial rituals demand some respect. Amazingly enough, in the heart of the most ancient Celtic / Neolithic / English countryside of all, it’s an Aussie…

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Maximus
1 Min Read

I had an interesting, Fish out of Water, other-worldly experience last weekend. Yes, I went to Armageddon. Some of you may think that I spend my entire tiny life on another planet, but this experience was definitely like living in a parallel universe. There were people wearing spandex, with cod-pieces, and underpants over tights. There were many people of indeterminate origin, begarbed as aliens of indeterminate…

Maximus
9 Min Read

So the Basin Bridge Board of Inquiry has finally reached the end of the hearing, after 71 days of mind-numbingly tedious detail. The judges on the panel deserve every cent they earn, for having to sit through and listen to the veritable mountain of documentation from NZTA and the various experts for or against it. There is not much doubt about what the eventual outcome will…

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Maximus
2 Min Read

So today the news finally hits that the streets that the old, former Dominion Museum, now masquerading as part of Massey University, is being sought by the Government as a potential site for… a museum. Thing is, of course, that it is not actually owned by Massey, nor by the Government, but instead is owned by the Tenths Trust – or subsidiary thereof – who in…

Maximus
1 Min Read

It’s not often that architecture gets a mention in the Queen’s Birthday Honour’s list – even less often that Landscape Architects do. Today, however, that was changed – both Frank Boffa (Dr Francis Dion Boffa, apparently), and Donald Miskell were honored with an ONZM (Officer of the Order of New Zealand). Great news – hearty congratulations guys – about time that the considerable efforts of Boffa…