Hooray. For the first time for absolutely ages, something innovative is happening in Taranaki St. Yes, right down the bottom of ‘Naki, opposite Zibbibo, and smack bang in front of the former sleazy strip club on top of Brandon Motors, a “Pod” has arisen on four shaky legs, and stands over us. When it was going up a couple of weeks ago, it was covered discretely…
Fish
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Maximus
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In some pretty shocking news that has just been leaked out of the new super-ministry this morning, the National War Memorial in Buckle St has been declared to be an earthquake prone building. The building, completed in 1932, has a concrete frame, but the weight of the heavy bronze bells in the Carillon is thought to have caused hairline cracks in the superstructure. The workers undertaking…
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Maximus
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Interesting proposal about the new Ministry of Work – amalgamating in four government departments – and what does it mean for the construction industry? Does it make sense or is it just another National party pre-emptive strike against the supposedly ‘fat’ civil service? The announcement earlier in the week that four departments were going to be merged, was interesting in that it had one of these…
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Maximus
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In a week like this, with memorials of the Japanese quake and tsunami, it’s interesting to see how they are coping – better than us Kiwis it seems. They seem to be able to move on from the past better than we can – despite the much older average age of the Japanese compared to us. Perhaps it is something to do with the Shinto religion…
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Maximus
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I’ve been thinking – a lot of discussion over this Kumutoto waterfront site is centred over the loss of views to Wellingtonians. We have a finite amount of precious waterfront land, with precious waterfront views, and we like to think that all our waterfront views are like this: That’s an image I took a couple of years ago of a lovely little steam-powered vessel in the…
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I’ve been quiet about this new proposed building because Scoop, Stuff, and the Arch Centre appeared to be taking a lead on discussing it – but discussion seems to have died down already. Public submissions close on March 9 – ie Friday, but this is the submission period before a more formal Resource Consent application. This is the most important new building on the horizon –…
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Maximus
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On Thursday morning, 1st March, 2012, the New Zealand licensed building practitioner scheme comes into being. From that day forward, the only people allowed to build or design anything more than just a little bit complicated than a chicken shed, are people who have the initials LBP after their name. Anything that requires a Building Consent. Anything that is to be known as Restricted Building Work….
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Maximus
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Sometimes you get the feeling that the world is trying to send you a message. This is a map of brick buildings in Wellington – unreinforced brick masonry, or URM as they are now fashionably known. These URMs are going to be a headache for all of us for the next 10-20 years… Light blue shows a URM, dark blue shows you an old (pre-1939) URM….
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I know that this is straying away a little from our stated aim of discussing architecture and urbanism, but before we get back to discussing buildings on the waterfront, isn’t there something more important that we should be discussing? I’m talking about the current trial – I was away during the actual police raids a few years back, and so have never heard or seen anything…