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
549 Articles
A Wellingtonian, interested in architecture and design. But enough about me, what about you?
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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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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
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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…
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Tonight, mad dreamers in the desert by the look of things – TELOS at 5.15 and the the Visions of Paolo Soleri at 6.45 at the Embassy Deleuze suites. They simply don’t make wild architectural dreamers like this any more – or if they do, they don’t get to dream in such a large scale. Last, looniest, nuttiest hangovers from the 1960s that will fill you…
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Tonight, two new films, at the Embassy. One on the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam (at 6.30pm), and the other on Frank Lloyd Wright in Japan (at 5.00pm). Having not seen either of them, my guess is that the public will flock to the FLW film, but my pick would be the Rijksmuseum. Stunning new work, amazing battle over the architecture. Last night’s films and the nights before…
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Tonight’s double-bill is of: The Oyler House – Richard Neutra’s Desert Retreat and Desert Utopia – Midcentury Architecture in Palm Springs. The double bill session starts tonight at the Embassy at 6.15 and is sponsored or linked with ADNZ, so if you’re an Architectural Designer, you should be there! And even if you’re not ADNZ, but merely ADHD like me, you should be there. Let’s hope…
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Opening night films at the Embassy: If You Build It…(5.45pm) and The Latin Skyscraper (8.45pm). Better than the crap that’s on telly…. If You Build It . . . (2013, Director Patrick Creadon, 82 minutes) If You Build It is a captivating look at a radically innovative approach to education. The film follows two young designer-activists, Emily Pilloton and Matthew Miller, to the poorest county in…
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Just in case you didn’t know already, there is an Architecture Film Festival starting Thursday 29 May here in Wellington – and going on every day for a whole two weeks – click here. Absolutely fantastic – just what we all want in the middle of this gloomy winter. Bugger the winter storms, I’m off to huddle in the nice womb-like rooms of the Embassy Deluxe…
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The local media hasn’t caught up with this just yet, but we have just seen the greatest loss of architecture since – well, I don’t know. Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s masterpiece of design, the Glasgow School of Art, caught fire yesterday, in preparation of the 4th year final degree show. Sparks on foam, in the basement, and as flames were filmed breaking out of the roof, for…