I was really puzzled by the article in the Dom Post in the weekend featuring local architect Angela Foster claiming that Wellington was an “expensive and constipated drain hole that can’t get moving” – and saying, like John Key did a decade ago, that “Wellington was dying”. It appears that she is comparing Wellington to Melbourne – and that we come off very much second best….
So far, so good – in Wellington at least. The rest of the big Fish of Maui seems to be taking a pasting. Weather is easing and we may have escaped the really serious stuff, down here, but further north things are seriously concerning – and it is now rather obvious just how vulnerable to storms. I’m particularly concerned about places like Hawkes Bay, which is…
Horrifying and tragic – the Turkish / Syrian earthquakes have been a steadily growing, unfolding disaster for the last week. Totals of 200 dead initially were obviously a sad underestimate – growing daily, or hourly, it has gone to 500, then 1000, 2000, 4000, 8000, and today they’re talking 11,000 – and there will no doubt be more. My heart goes out to them – the…
The apartment blocks going up in New Zealand are a little lacking in imagination. But it does not have to be like that. I was rifling through a stack of photos from a couple of years ago, and spotted these of a building in Amsterdam that I had snapped some pics of – it is soooo much more interesting than the rubbish we are getting served…
While it is sad to see the mighty Queen City of Auckland brought to its knees over some rain, it is nice not to have Aucklanders constantly be rude about Wellington weather. And also: note that none of us down here are making fun of them up there, knowing full well that, there but for the grace of God, go us. But first up, something to…
Although the news yesterday was full of journos saying that they had not expected Jacinda Ardern to announce her resignation first thing in the morning, in reality it was always going to happen. This is a blog (an out-dated concept, left behind in the maelstrom of the toxic twittersphere, I know) that usually confines itself to the somewhat drier, non-political subjects of Architecture, Urban Design, and…
Today’s post is a special one, contributed by regular reader Starkive By 1972 New Zealanders were questioning the environmental impact of humans and their engineering. A plan to further raise Lake Manapouri – already flooded for Comalco power – triggered a national reaction. The proposed extra dams were damned by hundreds of thousands of petitioners. An advertising jingle for fibreglass batts went to Number 1 on…
It’s a pretty lonely life here at the Eye of the Fish – tough at the top, as they say. But there are some things that have become a sort of yearly tradition, and one of those is to leave a gone fishing sign, or something that indicates that the author may indeed return one day. Readership plummets as well, as everyone is at the beach…
I’ve been wondering what the insides are like on the Dixon Street flats – never been in behind the doors at the base. Perhaps I’ll try to get in, now that they are moving people out. In the WCC Heritage Archive, there are these plans in a report. The only real drawing there is this one, which gives us the overall picture, but not much of…
In the typical manner of the bus, where you wait forever and then three buses come at once, so it feels for topics of conversation this week. I was going to write, I thought, on the possible move for Reading Cinema and Shopping Centre to leap back to life, having been so moribund for so many years. Then I thought, no, no, what if I was…