I just about wept when I heard about the first fire at the Mackintosh School of Art in 2014. I’m not at all amused that they have just suffered a second fire, only months before the building was due to be handed over, post-restoration. To lose your building once is a tragedy, to lose it twice is just careless. And when you have a building as…
Leviathan
331 Articles
Levi has recently taken on some blogging duties following the disappearance of Maximus. Reluctantly.
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Leviathan
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It’s good to see the Dom Post rebranding itself today as Te Upoko o te Ika – ie the Head of the Fish !! Great move towards Te Reo MÄori – but while they may indeed be a fish head, a fish is blind without its eyes. And we, my little fishy friends, are the Eye of the Fish. Just saying.
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Leviathan
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The ghost of Grenfell has come back to visit us, with the announcement of 18 buildings in Wellington with possible flammable cladding. Similarly, in Auckland, they have announced at the same time that they also have a list of buildings with ACP cladding, including 116 with the same type of core that Grenfell had. Precinct Properties in Auckland had this to say: “Their reports confirmed a…
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Leviathan
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One of the sad and weird things happening in New Zild under the previous National government, was a complete denial of any form of “housing crisis”, when fairly clearly things were getting completely out of control. Their governmental response was “hands-off” to the point of idiocy – they didn’t even have a Minister of Housing. Nada. Zilch. Nothing. No Minister, no housing, no crisis, no problem!…
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It was hard to ignore all the hype, but I managed. I went away for the weekend to a remote hut in the bush, with no electricity or internet or tv, just a fireplace and a transistor radio, which I turned off when the Royal Wedding started. I’m clearly not one of these sad pathetic people: but nor am I yet one of these Republicans (in…
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Leviathan
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We’re now six months into the Adern-led government, and this is the first real stab that Labour et al have had at solving the Housing Crisis. I’m keen to explore what the details of this budget mean to us, i.e. to the architecture, building, housing community. Disappointed that so far the main stream media haven’t really tackled this yet. Commenters have, of course, been quick off…
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The prospect of a new Embassy for the People’s Republic of China has been a long time coming – and now, at last, it is here. Well, nearly. The site has been empty for years – so long, in fact, that I really can’t remember what was there before, except for the Swimming Pool of the Girls and Boys Institute ? Off in the far south…
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News from the WCC this week, was that they have allocated $500,000 in funding for works towards seismic strengthening of heritage buildings, via the Built Heritage Incentive Fund. “The BHIF supports owners with the conservation and seismic strengthening of heritage buildings. This project combines with a number of others to support our resilience and environmental objectives, which we are currently encouraging public feedback on. Based on…
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Sadly, David Mitchell has passed away. His son Julian put it this way: David John Mitchell, sailor, adventurer, writer, wit, teacher, musician, dancer, styler, reader and architect has left us. We will sure miss the old boy! Love you dad. As an avowed Aucklander, Mitchell may not be known as well down here, but he was a lovely character, always with an impish grin, previously sporting…