Awkward and uneasy news this morning from giant insurance company IAG – or was it AIG ? that they may not be going to issue any more insurance for the Residential market in Wellington, due to the perceived risk. That’s…. not welcome news. Possibly, even, it is the sound of the death bell tolling for the future of Wellington as a city. It is almost certainly…
apartments
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Leviathan
3 Min Read
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…
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Leviathan
1 Min Read
Seeing as there is a lot of discussion on the best way to house NZ’s growing population, and how to cope with increasing housing unaffordability, it seems like an appropriate time to post this picture. Some things never really change. Photo taken in 1937 with a lovely device (not so sure whether it would pass Health and Safety guidelines now though…) to place your baby in…
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Maximus
4 Min Read
Oriental Bay is one of those rare Wellington locations with both northerly sunshine and views, and as such is heavily sought after by those with money to burn. Unfortunately, those keen to burn vast amounts of their funds on high cost glitzy real estate seldom also possess much taste. While earlier buildings on this southern riviera concentrated on individual villas with character galore, like the much…
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Maximus
3 Min Read
I mentioned this project in passing the other day, in a post about the return of the cranes to the city skyline, and thought its worth having a bit of a closer look at it this morning. I’ve been sneaking off into Moore Wilson’s car park to take photos every so often, and so this first photo is from a few months back, when just a…
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Maximus
4 Min Read
So, them Mayans were wrong again. Ooops, don’t mention the end-of-the-world thing! Embarrassed silence all round from the end-of-the-world believers… Yep, the world is still here, the country is still here, and what is most important of all, the Eye of the Fish is still here. If you’re like me, having been tramping the wide open spaces, and swimming the seven seas over the holiday break,…
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Maximus
3 Min Read
There was a time, before my time, when Architecture would get involved with politics. When to be a Modern Architect, meant that you ascribed to certain political beliefs as well as architectural ones, instead of just designing cute looking buildings in a fairly squarish sort of style. That view has pretty much gone now, although there are the odd spot of political posturing by those involved…
Maximus
3 Min Read
Updated photos included – see end of original post Although we’ve just recently posted about Apartments being the green shoots of economic recovery, we weren’t exactly sure if that was true. Is that a proven fact, or just another Eye of the Fish pescatorial scheme? Well, probably neither. But we didn’t think that our economic theory would get another item of proof just the next week….
Maximus
6 Min Read
The whole topic of Fat Ladies vs Fat Laddies brings up discussion whether either are more suitable for denoting the End of the Boom – and not (given that Opera is such a high money thing that booms in a boom and busts in a bust) the End of the Recession. So while in the prior posting we may not have got around to the main…
Maximus
2 Min Read
For a brief moment in time it seemed as though time had stood still, and that El Terry had given up finishing it, but then it was restarted with new contractors who actually seemed keen to complete the project. It’s one of the more complex developments Wellington has seen for a number of years: taking a barren empty site and layering on it a monster carpark…