So there we have it. After some 40-50 years of existence in the capital, the WCC accomodation tower at the Arlington site is coming down. We all know the story: designed by Ian Athfield, named after former Wellington councillor / mayor George Porter, the tower was a thoroughly quirky feature of Wellington, looming over the city with its slightly mad external appearance. At one end was…
Fish
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Leviathan
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Tena kotoe katoa and welcome back to the Upoko o te Ika a Maui. After a brief holiday, I’m back. While I’ve been off relaxing, Philip has been hard at work, planning and redesigning the website, adding in a search button so that you can search by key-words for key subject areas, giving it a more modern funky interface, and most wonderful of all to me:…
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Leviathan
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There’s a lot hanging onto the proposed extension to the Taranaki “Green School” at present, including the job of the Greens Co-Leader James Shaw, the future of the Green Party itself, the resulting possible coalition Government of Labour / Greens / NZ First, and heck, that could even possibly lead to the re-emergence of National under Crusher Collins. Yikes! And all because Shaw was silly enough…
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Leviathan
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Sad news today – Megan Wraight has died. She had been fighting cancer for some time. Megan, a tough Aussie Kiwi battler and Wellington’s best Landscape designer – heck, I’m going to say New Zealand’s best, even Australasia’s best – she gave the dreaded big C a hard fight, just as she gave everything a hard fight along the way. She’s going to be hugely missed….
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Leviathan
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You’ll all be aware of the recent central Government dictat that New Zealand stop using greenfield land and instead learn to densify. This is a Very Big Thing for little old Aotearoa. We’re a country that still thinks of itself as a rural paradise, a land where the Quarter Acre Half Gallon Pavlova Paradise is still a thing (thanks Austin Mitchell). Actually, section sizes haven’t been…
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Leviathan
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The Government has just released a revised National Policy Statement on Urban Design – which will affect the look of our major cities and the way they work. It comes into effect on 20 August 2020, just in time for the incoming Government. This is a big one – the NPS-UD was last updated in 2016 under the Nats, and so this is the first time…
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I hadn’t realised that time is moving so fast, but LGWM wants feedback on their proposals by Friday. That’s in just 3 days time. So go, click here and submit your feedback now. There are posters and hoardings all up and down the Golden Mile about this, so hopefully thousands of regular GM walkers, shoppers, workers, bussers, and travellers have put their input into the machine…
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At long last the Consultation begins. There are five options – two knock-down and rebuild options and three keep-the-existing-building options. “Low level remediation” which gives it another 35 years, “Mid level remediation” which should reach another 42 years, and the Council’s Preferred option “High level remediation” which should give Wellingtonians another 50 years at least. Only New build options will get more than that – estimated…
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Here at The Eye of the Fish World HeadQuarters tower building, we overlook our sweet wee metropolis and purvey the scene daily. We’ve been keen for some time to see what the LGWM team has been up to, and it is exhausting to have to creep along at the snails pace they set. Still: the city asked for a thorough, careful job to be done, with…
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Ennio Morricone passed away recently – a name I suspect that is reasonably well-known to this readership. If you’re not familiar with his work: he was a composer, of film scores, and particularly good at haunting, ghostly music for films like spaghetti Westerns. Unbeknownst to you lot, I spent all of the lockdown shut away in a small town on the edge of nowhere, completely alone,…