The 20under40 competition has been completed for another year – and here’s a post to wrap up the results. Every year (or two) we run a competition to see how a collection of brilliant young architectural minds can work, in the challenging atmosphere of a 24 hour design competition. We start at 6pm one night, and finish at 6pm the following night. The exhausted remainder finish off with a party of drinks and nibbles and watch jealously at someone else’s work who had a far, far better idea. By the end of the weekend, prizes have been awarded and its all over, Rover. This year, the scenario was the alternative universe involving the rebirth of Wainuiomata.

A huge thanks to our Judges:
Margaret Willard
Trevor Mallard
Lucie Derosiers
Simon Twose
We think they made a quite good mix.

Prizes went to:
Collective Verb (Duncan Harding et al) : who swept the board really: they took out the Architectural Centre Prize, the Beca Prize, and the Gordon Harris Modelling Prize. Well done !

Team MG (Monique van Alphen Fye et al) : Resene Colour Prize, Gordon Harris Drawing Prize

Naga (Jestin Nordin) : McCashin Beer Prize

Gouda Life (Stuart Taylor et al) : there could be only one winner of the Cheesy Prize

Thanks to organising committee: Kate Linzey (who did most of the work, we hear), Matthew Lander, Dennis Chippendale and especially Rebecca McLaughlan who got roped in at the last minute!

And of course a massive great thank you to all our Sponsors, including:
Beca
NZIA
Resene
Gordon Harris
McCashin’s Brewery
and especially ProductSpec (aka Jon) who helped run the event. Cheers All !

Last Saturday’s “This Way Up” on National Radio profiled the current exhibition at the Dowse.  The idea of zero waste in fashion, it appears from the interview, is not just a simple pragmatic one – but has had positive effects for innovatively rethinking fashion more conceptually.  The exhibition “Yield: making Fashion without Making Waste” is curated by Holly McQuillan and Timo Rissanen and is on until 26 June.

For those of you at Futuna last weekend (the 19th-20th March) celebrating the chapels’ 50th birthday you may have missed the Saturday morning interview with Rick Leplastrier.

The other day in the lead up to Easter I bought some hot cross buns.  At home I discovered they had been chocolatified.  Read the rest of this entry »

Now more than ever is the time to be thinking of fresh ideas. With Christchurch EQ version 1.0 and version 2.0 being totally eclipsed by events in Japan (Tsunami 9.0), it’s clear that some fresh thinking is due in the battle for sustainable buildings. Gerry Brownlee put his best foot forward (or, in his mouth) when he called for action on Old Dungas, and advocated “knocking all the old buildings down”.

Read the rest of this entry »

A rare chance to see the inside of Wellington’s Indoor Sports Stadium, with the architect. Bring your own PPE gear – ie hard hat, steelcapped boots, HiVis jacket.  Strictly limited to 40 people – must be current Arch Centre members. Reply to our Email to get your name onto the list.

As any cyclist is aware, paint on a road can be a life saver, very scarey or simply humorous – as those travelling the shortest cycle lane in Britain would know. Read the rest of this entry »