Category: RANTING
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Let’s not get pwned by the RoNSter
Save the Basin and Save Kapiti are organising a “Rail Against the Road/Expressway” rally at Parliament on Wednesday July 6th.
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Making porridge pancakes: Te Aro Park
I haven’t been down to the container exhibition of WCC’s Wellington 2040 vision, but am looking forward to doing so soon. What I have seen is the recent post over on EyeoftheFish, which gives us a sneak preview of a small part of the type of outcome that might be expected to emerge from that vision:…
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The great flyover teardown…
Those good folk over at the Congress for the New Urbanism run an initiative called “Highways to Boulevards,” seeking to reclaim urban environments and revitalise cities by campaigning for highway teardowns. They pay particular attention to elevated highways, yep, the good old flyover.
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Deep water
# RANTINGThe WCC Draft Annual Plan 2011/12 was out for public consultation recently. In these tight financial times the plan was generally about maintaining affordable rates through prioritising spending and reducing costs by $6 million, through reducing some services, improving the efficiency of other services and deferring non-urgent work. Although it’s not all cost cutting, there…
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Wellington’s Urban Design
At the Architecture Centre we feel it is time to ask some questions. The rumblings from our city have been going on for some time – the big question is : what IS going on at the Wellington City Council with regards to the Urban Design and Planning of the capital city? Arch Centre has a…
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NZIOB Debate
The NZ Institute of Building, annual Christmas Debate. School of Architecture, VUW i think !
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lanes
As the streets and traffic lanes are changed to make way for the new bus route along Manners Street, footpaths are blocked, familiar traffic islands have disappeared and pedestrians are forced to reconsider how they navigate the city.
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The Mystery of UpCycling Architecture
# RANTINGWhile up-cycling is the fad amongst crafty (industrial) designers, I have been wondering what up-cycling for architecture might be. Sure we have had adaptive reuse, from Scarpa’s Castelvecchio to Herzog & de Meuron’s Tate Modern, but you know, they just not as ‘sustainable’ sounding as ‘up-cycling’. Really adaptive reuse is just a bit too much…
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The Carbuncle Cup
In all of the current hoohaa surrounding Prince Charles’s latest intervention in the UK architectural scene, we can at least acknowledge his contribution to the field with his (in)famous descriptor “monstrous carbuncle”, with which he originally described the proposed Sainsbury Wing extension to London’s National Gallery (Prince Charles’s opposition led to the dropping of the…