Category: Comment

  • That other New Zealand city of some little significance…

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    Just to show that we are not completely parochial here at the Arch Centre, from time to time it is necessary to cast our eyes south of the Strait and north of the Tararua Ranges and acknolwedge that building activity does take place in various regional centres… such as, say, Auckland – the City of…

  • On “How ‘smart growth’ made NZ section prices and housing unaffordable”

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    It has been a while since property developers and their supporters last came out publicly against contemporary urban planning practices, but yes, it is time to roll your eyes and mutter: “here we go again”. Rodney Dickens, posting on the popular interest.co.nz blog, takes aim at “government-imposed town planning regulations, often dubbed the ‘smart growth’…

  • Wind and Hills: Have Traffic Engineers Noticed?

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    There’s a lot of information on the design of cycle lanes about – basic principles that most roads in Wellington contravine.  Examples include that they should be continuous, 1.5m wide, conspicuous at road crossing and not abandoned when roads get narrow.  I’ve borrowed these words from Cycling England, but other guidelines exist, such as the…

  • Another restructure – Should we care?

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    It’s inevitable, given their political nature, that governments (local and central) are subject to “restructuring” more than most institutions. Anyone involved in architecture and urban design in Wellington will have known, for a little while now, that the urban design bits of our city council have been, and are in the middle of, such a…

  • Cut and Cover

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    In a surprise move, the possibility of lowering State Highway One past the National War Memorial was announced on the front page of the weekend paper. At the Architectural Centre, we have been advocating this for a number of years now – we hosted a Symposium on the design of the ‘Memorial Park’ in 2007,…

  • On the Prowl

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    In recent weeks (something about tragic airline promotions), the notion of the cougar has been roaming the airwaves (probably more than our streets).  Rather than Baudelaire’s notion of a flaneur (the more placid experience of the city through walking), a more aggressive and sexually-charged urban exploration is gaining currency in our city’s lexicon.

  • Wahi Tapu

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    I remember many years ago there was a death in Cable Bay in Northland.  The area was deemed a wahi tapu.  There was to be no access to the restricted area, and the death was communally acknowledged through this marking of space.  I think this was the first time I had heard of this practice…

  • Primo Supremo: architectural justice?

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    Opened this week with princely aplomb, the symbol of New Zealand’s self-sufficient justice system, ironically begins its life with Royal approval.

  • Architecture as punishment

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    It’s a bit of an old chesnut but here we go again – lock ’em up and throw away the keys.  This week it seems that Act and National are convinced that humanity can’t do what architecture is so good at – incarceration.  Their addition to the Sentencing and Parole Reform Bill, if enacted, will…

  • Summertime architectural gems

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    Rough, cut or cooked …