Around 8 years ago, the city of Wellington was in a turmoil. The aged forces of Waterfront Watch, an elderly bunch of Wellingtonians with time on their hands, decided to take on the Wellington City Council over their proposals for the waterfront land. The public was stirred up into a paroxysm of hatred for Variation 17 – what were portrayed as proposals by the WCC to…
Fish
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Maximus
3 Min Read
Time to get back to talking about architecture. One of the things that the construction slow-down may give us, incidentally, is more time to actually think about architecture – the hectic pace that the architects in our city have been working at, with barely time to pause between designs, has led to a plethora of work of (at times) dubious quality. The designs for one multi-storey…
Maximus
4 Min Read
NZ Post has been busy over the last year, sending out messages of PostCodes to the whole of New Zealand. We had, until recently, a system of Post Codes that were laughable in their pathetic simplicity. My NZ Post Code in 2000 was 6001, which I shared with approximately 100,000 other people. I don’t think that I ever heard of anyone living in 6002, although it…
Maximus
2 Min Read
For a brief moment in time it seemed as though time had stood still, and that El Terry had given up finishing it, but then it was restarted with new contractors who actually seemed keen to complete the project. It’s one of the more complex developments Wellington has seen for a number of years: taking a barren empty site and layering on it a monster carpark…
Maximus
3 Min Read
There seems no doubt that today will go down in history as an important date, and it seems churlish to ignore it and debate the whys and wherefores of buildings in Wellington, when the real focus for much of the world has been on the buildings and public spaces in Washington, half a world away. The date for us is clear enough: its the 21st of…
Maximus
4 Min Read
Watching an episode of Grand Designs recently, while on holiday, made me thankful that we don’t have such a high and idiotic level of bureaucracy as they do in England: but then again, nor do we have an architectural presenter with the charisma and sardonic tongue of Kevin McCloud. In this programme, an architect called Francis Shaw was attempting to restore a castle in Skipton, in…
Maximus
2 Min Read
While I’ve been quite impressed by the new trolley buses in Wellington, one gleaming in its paua-shell colour-scheme as it slides silently through the city, I still have a hankering for a double-decker, which are fairly common throughout England, and of which we seem to have one roaming solo in the streets of Wellington. It is of course a RouteMaster, the most famous of all the…
Maximus
2 Min Read
In all probability, this year is going to be a bit of a quieter year than previous years, especially on the Design and Construction front. Auckland has been in a constructional doldrum for the last 18 months or so, while Wellington has been curiously bouyant, but realistically, this is not a state that is going to continue. Although there are no real reasons for our economy…
Maximus
1 Min Read
2008: nearly over. Lots of construction, lots of commentary. 2009: likely to be lots less of one, and who knows about the other. Thank you all for your input, your comments, your information, and your interest. Its been a blast, but its time for a break for a bit from the people behind the Maximus logon (note: one of the following images may be more true…