The Architectural Centre Inc

Category: RANTING

  • “Is it because rich people own yachts?”

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    Sometimes riding my bike into work I bemoan the fact that the laws of the sea aren’t replicated in the laws of the road.  

  • Capital Precinct

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    We’re pleased to note that Her Worship the Mayor Kerry Prendergast, and the Prime Minister, the Right Honourable John Key, have been getting together to launch “Our Extraordinary Democracy – The Capital City Initiative“. It seems that it is not often that architecture, design, and especially urban design get discussed at such high level –…

  • Queens Wharf

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    After waiting many years, Wellington Waterfront finally held the long awaited Competition for the Outer Tee. We’ve been holding our breath, waiting to hear what the results of the competition were. How many entries? Any good ideas? Was there an outright winner? Could the judges make up their minds? But since the entry period closed,…

  • The Elephant in the Room

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    Phil Jones‘ talk on last Wednesday (9 Sept 09) presented the idea of shared spaces (also known as naked streets) in the context of the council’s proposal to convert lower Cuba St into a shared space.

  • Pretty Buildings

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    I remember, on my first trip to Chicago, being completely impressed by the “girly” skyscrapers.

  • Ever Near a Fairy-Land

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    The Architecture Centre pays hommage to the passing of the King (of Pop) pity he wasn’t also a king of architecture. As the Architect’s Journal yesterday said: the ranch was a disneyfied mashup of Queen Anne Style and New England vernacular. Not that I’ve got anything against mash-ups, Charles Jencks & Terry Farrell made them…

  • bete comme un vrai architecte?

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    So where have the loquacious architects gone? Have architects become, like the tradition of French painters, dumb… ‘bete’ also suggesting ‘beast’, an animal without speech. It is true isn’t it? If you think of the Athfields and Walkers, not to mention the Fowlers and Waldens, architects used to be rampant orators, at times difficult to…

  • Pared to the core – Local Body Councils on a Hiding to nothing

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    First they let him loose on the dance floor, then Super-Auckland, and now the rest of us – does this man know no humility…? Rodney Hide is set to Tango all over Local Body law in order to reduce them to core services – such as public health and safety, and rubbish collection. Here is…

  • Heading out east?

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    In conjunction with plans for the indoor sports stadium on Cobham Drive (not that this is mentioned in any of the council documents) Kilbirnie town is to become a bit more of a town.

  • On Fish, bridges, Boris, Jonathan, and pack-donkeys

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    Maximus may have been all fish-out-of-water proposing an inhabited viaduct over Wellington’s the Basin Reserve over at Eye of the Fish, but it seems that somebody is reading that blog over in our good old Mother Country… Boris Johnson, Lord Mayor of London no less…