Month: January 2009
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At least we still have the Bledisloe Cup…
Having taken the Cricket World Cup, the World Netball Championships, and enough Olympic Gold to put a serious offer on the South Island, the Aussies look like a good bet to take out the WAN House of the Year 2008 as well. The ‘long list‘ of 30 contains entries from Argentina to Latvia, but the country…
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James Shaw and Squint Opera
Our apologies: this event has been cancelled. We hope to be able to reschedule it for another time in the future. This Thursday 29th January: a coming event that I’m sure you’ll be keen to come along to. James Shaw, formerly of Wellington and now working with Squint Opera in London, is in town long…
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Wind, billowing skirts, and Italian property investors…
Despite being talked up by hardy locals and the odd poet (and I mean odd), one of Wellington’s least endearing qualities is the incessant wind. The Encyclopedia of Chicago, that other famous Windy City, even attempts to shed the notion of Chicago being particular windy (in the climatic sense), by evoking: Wellington, New Zealand, where it…
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Video of the Week II: Sony building melody step (some secret commands)
Who’d a thought getting from one level of a building top the next could be so much fun: these are the melody stairs from the Sony Building in Tokyo. Here’s a way to encourage more physical activity and less lift usage – just don’t put my office anywhere near the staircase. And apparently, you get…
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from the Similarity Files – or, “haven’t we met before?” Shaklee Terraces
Shaklee Terraces, 444 Market Street, San Francisco CA, United States Architect: Skidmore Owings Merrill, 1979 Isn’t this somewhat eerily familiar, in this pic at least (and a whole bunch of others by Thomas Hawk, which can be seen here)? While any similarities to a certain green building, completed in our own city almost a decade later (and with…
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The Flickr Travelogues – architectural eye-candy from Hamburg
The Flickr photo-sharing website is an amazing resource for the virtual tourist – oh the places I have virtually been to… It is, of course, only a visual form of travel, but we here in the antipodes have coped with books, magazines and slide shows when learning about architecture for quite some time – and no…
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Video of the Week I: Architecture stripped bare
(Warning – this clip features artistic and architectural nudity…) You know you’re in trouble when the opening and closing lines of a short architecture-related video are thus: “What happens if you ask architects to let rip… …Really, architects are at their best when they’re fully dressed [muffled snigger], very serious, and just a little bit…
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The Latest Newsletter is now out
Yep, unlike last year, when there was the occasional newsletter trailing its official dates, we’ve started this year almost ahead of schedule. The January:February 2009 issue of the newsletter is now out featuring articles on: Guerilla Gardening, Holiday Reading, WCC politics, the new Chinese Garden in Dunedin and of course a bit of poetry. It…
