Engineers sometimes get a bad press, but I think it is worth singing their praises today. While we have all been huddled inside by the fire (or, if you don’t have a fire, then huddled by the cat), our Structural Engineering buddies have been slogging it out, going round town, inspecting buildings. Late at night, possibly all night long, down darkened corridors with potentially falling masonry,…
Fish
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Leviathan
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Once again we have an earthquake, and once again, our city gets off lightly. Despite all the hoohaa and sirens and tsunami warnings etc, and apart from the tragic loss of a couple of people in the South Island, Wellington has brushed off the quakes with a shrug. And that is exactly what we should be able to do, every time it happens. The Geonet warning…
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Leviathan
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Wonderful to hear that last night Roger Walker received the NZIA Gold Medal for 2016 – well deserved and long overdue. There was quite a nice wee film screened about Roger and his work / life, featuring of course some suitably humorous tales about cars, women, his connection with Ath, and above all, architecture. Sadly, Ath has gone, but gloriously, we still have Roger, looking exactly…
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Leviathan
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A reminder, of far-off wars, and very nearly announced competitions. The Pukeahu National War Memorial Park is announcing the winners of the competition for a memorial to the French war dead, on 11 November. The entries are all on display up at the old Dominion Museum, just at the start of Peter Jackson’s WWII exhibition (go see: it is very good), but if you can’t get…
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Leviathan
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With the only topic trending right now being the anointing by the masses of Mr Trumplestiltskin to the position of President-Elect, it seems churlish to talk about matters such as Urban Design or Wellington architectural experimentation. There’s little connecting the two – except for the architectural specifications for a wall between Mexico and the US of 3,145 km…. runs through four US states (Texas, New Mexico,…
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Leviathan
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What’s happening Wellington? From being a dead city that no one knows what to do with (thanks honky johnkey), Wellington now seems to be the place-de-jour for hotels. Castles has got one going opposite Davy Jones (very clever placement there Alex!), there is a proposal for one on the site next to the Michael Fowler Centre (are you not forgetting the giant underground tank for holding…
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Leviathan
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News today that the Wellington suburb of Newlands is to get a new “executive subdivision” called the Lookout, sitting up on top of the hill overlooking the harbour. There are 48 lots, most fairly standard sort of 390m2 to 590m2 size (roughly a tenth of an acre to a sixth of an acre), with some larger one (probably mostly unusable hillside) up to 1370m2 (still just…
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Leviathan
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I’ve been reading The Big Smoke recently, historian Ben Schrader‘s epic tome on the history of the urban scene in New Zealand – at least from 1840 till 1920. Hopefully, Schrader will now work on a sequel, from 1921 to 2021. Not that far away! It is an excellent book, well worth the purchase price, and apart from one chapter which got a little too graphical…
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Leviathan
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I was looking back at a box of old books the other day, when I came across my collection of Tintin and Asterix books. Graphic novels, if you were to ask me now, but just comic books back then. A valuable learning aid for puns (either subtle or brutal) and in my case, French, as our school library only held copies of Asterix in the original…
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Leviathan
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Sadly, very sadly, Rewi Thompson has passed away. An architect, a mentor, a professor at Auckland University, Rewi was of Ngati Porou and Ngati Raukawa lineage, but was also just an incredibly nice, friendly guy. I don’t think I ever heard him say a bad word about anyone. Having met him a few times, I was always impressed at the quiet way he conducted himself, and…