When I was a young fish, helping my Dad stack the timber in the woodshed, there always used to be shiny silver slaters running for cover as we shifted the timber. I remember that on occasions, when loading the wood into the fire, a slater would still be marooned on a log as we placed it into the burning grate, and there would be a satisfying…
Buying the latest copy of Monocle the other day, as one of the few quality, intelligent, and witty magazines out there, I could not help but notice, once again, that Wellington does not feature at all in their list of the World’s Top 25 Cities for Quality of Life. Nor does it feature in the Economist magazine’s similarly titled list. Yet we know that Lonely Planet…
The Convention Centre proposal comments are due by the 8th August ie Friday. 14th August at 5.00pm. Here is my submission to Wellington City Council. The proposal to build a combined Convention Centre and Hilton Hotel is a good proposal for Wellington, and it should be encouraged to go ahead, with some strong urban design amendments. The good points about the proposals are that it is…
Has anyone seen this building lately? It appears to have gone walkabout…. Speaking of which, the Creche of Compassion is getting moved again today…
A slight digression from buildings in New Zealand – while I’m watching one of those house-building programs about self-build housing in the UK. This one, on Tuesday nights on TV3, is called “The House that £100,000 Built“. Ruth and Tony’s “cash-strapped” project in Shropshire was the feature house this week, with a timber-clad couple of boxes that look similar, but not as sophisticated, to an architecturally-designed…
Its not just residents living near the Establishment that thinks living in the city can be a noisy affair. I’m overjoyed to hear that residents in Seville have also had enough of noisy visitors milling and shouting in the streets below. They’ve just passed a law about it in Seville, according to the Guardian, and hooray for them. “It’s a balance between the right of residents…
“It’s a tragedy that the actions of a tiny minority of people have succeeded in holding back Wellington for years to come. Their opposition to the Basin Reserve bridge project will cost countless jobs and has other significant ramifications. Wellington could miss out on around $465million of investment.” So says the current head of the Wellington Employers Chamber of Commerce, according to Scoop. John Milford, who…
Well, my abilities at prediction are evidently way off the mark – as noted in the previous post, the Board of Inquiry have returned their verdict, and the result is an (almost) resounding defeat for the proponents of the Flyover – the Resource Consent is declined. I’m delighted to have been shown to be so stupidly wrong in that the Board would rubber-stamp the Flyover application…
The official Board of Inquiry report is due out on the 22nd July, but I wouldnt hold your breath if you think there is going to be anything radically different coming out of it. So, rather than waiting another day to have my suspicions confirmed, I’m going public today with an Eye of the Fish prediction: the Flyover will be approved tomorrow. I’d be more than…
I’m not sure whether to be horrified or to applaud the idea that buildings could be required to compete against each other in a sort of “Heritage Idol” as indicated in the paper today. Just how close to the idea of the Reailty TV show are the Council prepared to take it? I’ve always enjoyed the first few weeks of American Idol more than the later…