While my efforts have been wilting lately, thankfully, other blogs are springing up to take the place of this one. First up is Congestion Free Wellington, which is, as it says on their blog, a “congestion-free Wellington coalition made up of Cycle Aware Wellington, FIT: Fair Intelligent Transport, Living Streets Aotearoa, OraTaiao: The NZ Climate & Health Council, Save the Basin, and Trams-Action.” That’s a pretty…
A lovely song with a lovely architectural video – Teeks. What a voice !
The report of the Mayor’s Housing Taskforce is out and you can download it to read at your leisure. Spear-headed by Mayor Justin Lester and Deputy Mayor Paul Eagle, the report has been prepared by a group of people, Members of the Housing Taskforce, that reads like this: Deputy Mayor Paul Eagle, Chair Stephanie McIntyre, Downtown Community Ministry Morrie Love, Wellington Tenths Trust Jo Taite, Kahungunu…
In the world’s slowest playing and longest lasting saga, what could be the final chapter has been announced. A new building – the last new building? – for the Wellington waterfront. The Dominion Post of course rushes straight to get an opinion from the bunch of wild rebels that were probably teenagers when this controversy started: the aged and creaky-jointed citizens who appointed themselves to rule…
Is there anything more scary than the sight of a tall building on fire? Grenfell Tower in West London was in flames all Wednesday, burning through the night like a giant torch – this is a major, major incident. Apart from the loss of life (at the moment only reporting 6 dead, but surely set to rise considerably), my guess is that this will also have…
The announcement that the Council (WCC) is looking at getting developers to take city office blocks and convert them to housing is a big game-changer. It is a sign of an increasingly heated property market and an increasingly frustrated Council, seeing as the Special Housing Areas set up by the Government have not really had any effect so far. It’s always hard to get new buildings…
So much exciting architectural news on at the moment I hardly know where to start, including the surprise decision to award consent for a hotel/apartment building down by the Bus Interchange (pretty silly decision seeing as the last building went to court), signs of movement on the Christchurch Cathedral rebuild front (but decisions still being put off again and again: heads should roll: pawn takes bishop…
Nau mai. Te Tiriti o Waitangi has been welcomed into its new home, a specially-designed whare at the National Library, along with two other founding documents of Aotearoa. It sits alongside He Whakaputanga o te Rangatiratanga o Nu Tireni – the Declaration of Independence of the United Tribes of New Zealand, and the 32,000 signature petition on Women’s Suffrage – Te Petihana Whakamana PÅti Wahine, in…
One of the more enjoyable nights of the year for us architects is the Awards night, held in Te Papa last night. I thought the awards jury did a really good job this year and picked a smaller, but tighter bunch of projects for awards. There was a few awards for teams at the top of their game, but it was lovely to see a few…
As you may have noticed, I’ve been doing less blogging lately, partly so that I can get more work done, and partly so that I can get more reading done too. I’m catching up on a few books I had bought but not yet read. One of these is Peter Beaven’s book about his own life and his substantial body of architectural work, Peter Beaven ARCHITECT….