I ask these questions because it intrigues me, but it is also an area in which the public seem to have very different views. Basically, in NZ, the public really seem to want views. To crave views. To expect views. But are they right to do so?

As you probably already know, there is no – NO – right to a view in NZ property law. Possibly no right anywhere in the world. Except, of course, if you have access to expensive lawyers or a curiously helpful Council. But that won’t stop people yapping on about the indignity of views being infringed. Even if they have no legal or moral right to. Their pathetic grievances know no limit, big or small.

OK – so, views are out. But what about sunlight? Is that protected? In parts of Britain – Yes. But in NZ?

Nope, of course not. Who can guarantee the right to the sun? This is a question that frequently arises with the question of siting of infill housing. It is also one of those questions that arise whenever trees occur, because, as you know, trees grow over time, and add branches and height, and what was once small and cute may end up bloody large, but without a Resource Consent.

OK then – so, there is no right to a view, or to a certain amount of sunlight. But what about Daylight? That one is different – one of the few things regulated for in the Building Code. That’s the one, G7, which talks about Natural Light, and dictates a minimum of 30 lux of light down at floor level for 75% of the year.

So, 30 Lux then – how much is that? It is clearly not equivalent to sunlight, but it is also not equivalent to “full daylight: which is over 10,000 lux. 30 lux is also nowhere near the light level of a standard office building or supermarket, which is around 500 lux. Not is it near the level of a brightly lit living room, which is rated about 100 lux.

It is, fortunately quite a bit higher than a full moon (0.25 lux) and some three times higher than a candle burning about a meter away (10 lux). 30 Lux is apparently about the level of a “dimly lit corridor”. That’s what you are legally entitled to ask for. The ubiquitous AI bot at the evil empire of Google says that “In building and safety standards, 30 lux is usually the minimum required light level for walkways and exit routes to ensure people can navigate safely without tripping.”

It brings the subject into clear focus then (hard to do in low light levels!) that there is a building project proposed for Wellington where they are arguing over whether the G7 light levels even reach that dreadfully low standard. And by this chart below, it is not even on the bottom rung!

If your building cannot reach even the bare-arse minimum of 30 lux on the floor because your proposed apartment is buried 3-4 storeys down the arse end of nowhere, is this good architecture? Is this good living? Is this acceptable? Is this providing an affordable housing solution even if you are paying less for lower apartments than for units up top in the clean clear air? Are they affordable even then? Are the answers to all of these questions really ALL in the negative?

More on this in Part 2…

I’ve just read over on the mighty Wellington Scoop that WCC has voted to raise the height on areas north of Courtenay Place, in order to satisfy some developer’s fantasy to build more than they are allowed to. This is wrong on so many levels.

For a start, the developer has been pushing the boundaries for so long that they are starting to rival Donal Rump in his ability to lie and to bullshit. I quote here from Felicity Wong’s article on Scoop:

I don’t know who Mr Loveridge is, or who he thinks he is, but having four floors of extra height all marketed as “Level 7” is just bullshit, plain and simple, and Loveridge should be poured back into his bottle with a firmly smacked bottom. He’s a young dude with plenty of fight in him, having appeared at events with the Mayor and other dignatories, but this is just silly. Here’s what he wants to do:

That building peeking out of the top of the existing buildings is what he is after. So, I hear some of you ask, “What is wrong with that?” Others of you, I hear even more loudly, are saying “Jesus – what the fuck is that and who in their right mind would want to live there?” and to you I say many things, very few of them printable.

Yes, I know that it is only a concept sketch and therefore not the finished thing, but it is truly as ugly as a 1990s heat pump and probably a lot less efficient. I mean, what sort of architect worth their salt would let an image as ugly as that out into the world?

Here it is with that bloody wire removed and the sky made looking like it occasionally shines in NZ. Oh, and I removed the building as well. Isn’t that nicer?

OK – so here it is with the building back. Still ugly though. So much beige in the world. Boring!

And so here it is with a better colour scheme – well, maybe not better, just different, but it is worth thinking about, no?

But the real crime here is not how stupid / boring / ugly the building is – and it certainly is ALL those things – its like a stack of cages for laboratory rats, but without any of the pedigree and they’re all smoking cigarettes to test vaccines for cancer. The real problem is letting some dickhead developer build 4 extra floors all called level 7 and blocking out sunshine on the nearby streets.

Yes, indeed, that is where I am going – why compromise the city for a piece of architecture as shit as this? Why not just say no to crap that spoils the city and contributes nothing back to it? Courtenay Place, along with Blair and Allen St, when the going is good, are magical. Not right now with all the scum on the footpath in every doorway, but in the early 2000s Blair and Allen were the bizz ! Heritage buildings, great restaurants, sunny by day and vibrant by night, but squeezing in a contender for the world’s shittiest development just because they want to crap all over the population – don’t do it Wellington, it is just not worth it.

Wellington has spent the last 3-5 years working on the height limits for the city, and now you want the Council to roll over and play meek and mild just because a local Dick wants to lord it over the city? Don’t be a Dick. Refuse this building.

When I was a young Fish, swimming happily at the school, I got hooked for a while on Isaac Asimov and his storehouse of novels about the use of Robots in the future. Forget the irredeemable Will Smith’s movie – what a load of tosh – but the books were great.

Do I need to go on? A quick reminder perhaps?

Asimov wrote an amazing total of 37 science fiction short stories and a whole six novels, all centred around the development and use of sentient positronic robots remaining here on earth or sent into space in place of us fragile human beings. That’s a lot of words and thoughts about Robots – I think it is fair to say that he really ironed out the bugs in the programming of the Robotic positronic brain. Written between 1940 !!! and 1995, Asimov wrote I, Robot in 1950 and all these novels and short stories share some common dream lines and rules, known to all Sci-Fi readers as The Three Laws of Robotics.

The Three Laws, presented to be from the (fictional?) “Handbook of Robotics, 56th Edition, 2058 A.D.”, are written thus:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

These are so influential to many Sci-Fi writers and others – they have even influenced the so-called “ethics” of AI – although seemingly not very well so far. Just a quick reminder – if this is from the 56th Edition of the Handbook of Robotics in 2058, that is only 32 years in the future from now – and so we must already be working from an earlier edition. Here’s an image from a recent fashion show / horror show, with some deluded lady dressed as Cruella D’Ville taking two robotic doggos for a walk dressed in frilly dog dresses. I would remind her that perhaps real dogs would not put up with that shit…

In later years, Wikipedia tells me, Asimov added a 4th law saying: A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.

Hmmm. Fat lot of luck getting that one to stick buddy! Asimov attributed these laws and their exploration to a character in his books, Dr Susan Calvin, who explores the good and the bad points of her line of robots throughout the novels. But humanity seems intent on killing off all of us long before we get there, by rewarding us with an idiot President of the Earth, a vile Arch Enemy of the Earth, and a knob-like Prime Mincer of Paradise.

The actual term “Robot” came about from a Czech guy called Karel Capek, an anti-fascist, anti-communist, science fiction writer, publishing R.U.R. or Rossum’s Universal Robots in 1920. The word comes from a Czech word robotnik (forced worker, ie slave), which seems prescient given what we ask them to do these days. Here’s a War Dog, carrying bombs / ammo / spare khaki underpants into war. What is more embarrassing to the Robo Dog – dressed up as a tart / bitch or being a slogging packhorse?

And hence to the point of the first sentence of this blog post. Have you seen what is happening out there in Robot Land?

For years Robots have been our poor hapless slaves: welding car doors, building Teslas, assembling televisions, running into burning buildings on four dog-like legs, sent into battle in servitude to humankind, vacuuming the floor, cleaning up the planet after our presumed demise (Wall-E), but it is only recently that we have seen a young upstart Chinese company unleash upon our screens robots that can run faster than us, do synchronised acrobatics better than us, coherently back-flip and front flip, somersault and more. Round-house kung-fu kick even?

What I find rather incredulous is that gormless hordes of teenage boys (mainly) stand around and take photos of these flipping robots. I mean, this picture above is of one Robo-fighter doing a flying kick (and nearly connecting) to the head of a fellow Robot.

Yes, they were pretty crap fighters, putting in a solid performance of being “punch drunk” ie hit in the head so often that they could not longer tell where their opposing fighter was standing. But it is truly sad. Pretty sad pathetic audience as well. Truly these are nerds without any redeeming features of personality. Hmmmm. No doubt live streaming to their Insta-mates. What is worse – robots kicking each other to death or humans doing the same in MMA goon squads? May I remind you of the giant orange cheesecake putting this on the front lawn of the White House to “celebrate America’s 250th birthday” ? Or to preside over its rapid demise in year 251 ?

Is he going to demolish the actual White House next? Or just put the whole building in a gold lame bikini and spray-tan the whole damn administration with tanning butter?

I have, of course, had some interactions with Robots myself recently. Here’s the back and the front of a happy little chappy in a chinese dinner place over in Oz – happily running orders of dumplings to customers and then carrying away their plates after dinner.

And here is a floor cleaning robot in a Walmart somewhere in the USA – poor overworked machine, just like the people behind the tills there.

Always give robots two “eyes” it seems, and possibly a mouth. Why? You may ask… And I will leave you with two remaining robots, one (from over a decade ago) of a damn sexy robot-playing ping-pong player (ooh-err!) and then one of a purpose-built sexy robot that is so real we can’t quite tell if it is human or not, but we know we can probably pinch and poke her and get away with it.

What will our future be, as human beings? Are they our robot overlords, or just dumb automatons playing table tennis? Will we rule them, or will they rule us? Who will fight our future wars for us? Robots? Slaves? American GIs? Ukranian drones with bmbs? What is our robotic future going to be? Will our robots be imbued with morals? Rules? Laws? or just soap-suds and spermicides?

Why am I writing about this? You may ask, given that it has nothing to do with architecture? The simple answer is that of course, in the axing of Chris Penk, the Minister for many things, Lux-once has not only got rid of the only competent person with any understanding of Defence, with Penk having been in the Navy and as a commander of an Australian submarine (although I’m not quite sure how he managed that as he is a Kiwi, but regardless), Luckson has now had to re-deploy two of his incredibly lame ministers in charge of Penk’s portfolios, such as Defence and here is where it impacts us in housing, as Minister of Construction. Meanwhile, our penile headed Prime Minister, and I say that reluctantly but honestly, in that his head resembles nothing more than a shiny plastic dildo, and should be put to use in similar means, sticking it into places where the sun doesn’t shine. However, Penk’s demotion places him in the unique position of clearly been the only person in the National cabinet that has not been a suck-up to the PM, who is the very definition of an ailing, lame duck, head of Government. Luxtux is not the future, that’s for sure.

By the election, and when Luxon no doubt gets rolled in the coming months after the election, whether he wins or not, Penk will be the lone person standing remaining unsullied and available to lead the National party once again. Bishop never really had a chance, except if he was to be elected by the common man or woman, as Bishop is a boy from the Hutt, and comes across as a boy from the Hutt, and gets things done as a boy from the Hutt, whether we agree with their focus or not. Similarly other members such as Stanford and Brown also get things done, but Brown just seems loathsome to me, as a product of his fecund Christianity and his obsession with roads everywhere, he is somebody that I would dearly like to see fall under the rear wheels of a truck. Penk on the other hand, has been a breath of fresh air to the construction industry.

Now hold on, I know what you’re going to say: that he knows nothing, and that has been the good point about it, because knowing nothing but being prepared to listen, has been a refreshing change from our previous succession of Ministers of Construction, who really have no clue and thereby took that to mean: do nothing. At least with Penk he has made several changes, moved legislation on, and produced at least an attempt to see some forward action in the field of construction, which previous Ministers have really, never managed. Not that I am particularly a fan of National, and clearly not a fan of ACT, or New Zealand Facist, but there is an opportunity here for a change. For some unknown reason, the Labour party has been labouring under the misapprehension that by doing nothing, they will inherit the Crown of Government purely by dint of the coalition falling apart at the seams. Well, that nearly happened yesterday, but ultimately it did not, and Luxury got back in to limp once more towards the finish line of possibly the worst government we’ve had since Rob Muldoon exited the election in a blaze of brandy, photo-glory, mumbling and shuffling into his ice cubes and leaving the country in a wreck, which took two whole decades to recover from.

In a similar manner, by trusting in Willis as a clearly inept financial minister, with a severe lack of imagination and understanding, Luxitive has condemned New Zealand to an extended downturn in economic events, one that is taking many years to climb out of the mire of debt. One of the few high points of this, and I know it doesn’t seem like a High Point at the moment, is that New Zealand’s housing price crash was desperately needed and desperately overdue. To all those that own property, the housing price crash will be a catastrophe, especially if you have to sell in the short term. But it has reduced our ridiculous mortgage-to-income ratio from an average of nine, now down to an average of six, making new buyers an option again. This is still far from what is needed for us to get to the desired mortgage-to-income average of three but to be honest, I don’t think that day will come. Many years ago, I went to a presentation by Gareth Morgan, who at that stage was setting up some form of opposition party to have whoever was in government, and he was talking about the rise of unaffordability of housing. He noted (correctly, of course, being an economist), that a housing correction was needed and there were only two ways of achieving this. Either fast, i.e. crash, or slow i.e. stagnation and deflation over many years. We started off with one and ended up with the other. Nobody likes either, but one hurts shorter and one hurts for longer. What is important for the construction industry is for prices to stay low, so that people can afford to build again.

We need for our industry a steady supply of new work to be coming through our books, both in the designing and drawing, as well as the consenting and construction. That’s the life blood for us in our business in this town, in this city, in this country, that we need construction in order to grow, and also in order to work our ways out of the morass that we find ourselves in. It is ironic that Laxon bangs on in his confession about the need for growth, while at the same time, his finance minister is stopping any growth by stifling the economy, and reducing us all to working from home, or staying on the dole, long-term. Again, looking back in history, at the Labour years following Muldoon’s demise, there were three long years between 1984 when Muldoon crashed the economy, and 1987 when David Lange and Roger Douglas rose to power and set about reinvigorating New Zealand’s moribund state of decline, and at last gave the common kiwi something to cheer about, and start us off in the opposite direction that we have been on periodically for a number of years.

Labour’s current viewpoint that if it leaves National alone, it will eventually shoot itself, clearly came unstuck yesterday, and they should be out widely proclaiming alternative campaign strategies today in an effort to get the public to focus on a viable alternative to National, especially now that Luckless has revealed he is a dead man walking. But I am listening to the news today, and I hear no mention of what Labour is doing as an alternative to what National has done. Surely Winston Peter’s time in the limelight is over, given the depth of the wrinkles on his face with long lost crevices encasing memories of what he used to be in his prime, before he just became the Minister for the Elderly. Similarly, young whippersnapper, David Seymour, surely the only minister that brings out the urge to connect his face with the larger end of a baseball bat, repeatedly, and his ACT party, has reached perhaps a low point in political savvy given the recent appointment of Paul Henry as a political candidate, which will probably last about as long as did Stuart Nash’s stupid run at being a politician yet again. Nash has gone, Henry will go and hopefully, Shane Jones too, will also dry up and blow away, with his incessant rhetoric around drilling for oil and slaughtering New Zealand’s native wildlife. We have no need for that here. We are not Texas. We don’t need to drill for oil.

We need to be buying electric cars, and building more solar farms, constructing more windmills, seeing as wind and solar are two things that New Zealand will never run out of. Yes, my car runs on petrol, but that’s why I live in Wellington, in that I don’t need a car to get to work. Yes, Aucklanders do need their cars at present, but their shiny new train track will at least start a reformation for them to avoid a full-blown cart economy at some point in the future. In the meantime therefore, I predict that National’s popularity will continue to decline and Chris Penk, if he keeps his powder dry (and he should know this having been Minister of Defence), he may yet spring back another time. In the meantime we are sorely lacking a coherent, Minister of Construction, having been settled with a replacement Minister, who know not only knows nothing, but is disinclined to listen, as has been showing with his numerous other portfolios. Roll on November, roll on the election.

In other news, of really significant effect for us here in Wellington, Mayor Little and Minister Bishop made a trip to the Arlington development today (might this have been scheduled for Minister Penk a mere day or two before?) and declared that work would begin. That’s great news – but also rather sad that it is now only going ahead at a third of its size. Not High density, barely Medium density, what we really don’t need is more Low density in the centre of Wellington.

While previous plans included more than 300 units, construction will start next year on 104 units. The units will be made up of 55 one-bedroom, 37 two-bedroom, and 12 four-bedroom units. The land will have one seven-storey building for one-bedroom and two-bedroom units, with the four-bedroom units in a terrace formation. Bishop said construction would start at the site next year, and would be completed by 2029. The minister said the Arlington development in Wellington’s Mt Cook suburb had been paused by the previous Labour government due to the cost. Costs had blown out on a plan for 301 apartments from $296 million budgeted in 2021 to $419m, he said.

Half the site will now be left empty. Anyone got any more news about this project?

It started off a couple of years back with the incredibly stupid campaign for Three Waters – bad videos, incompetent propaganda and a totally incomprehensible business model – and now with the equally dislikable and equally bad and somehow different yet still exactly the same clusterfuck that is Tiaki Wai. Started out bad, still getting worse, run by invisible idiots who don’t talk or appear in public, with an insistence on installing water meters everywhere, including to properties that simply do not need them.

Case in point today on Wellington Scoop, where an article quoted a granny who has an apartment as well as a basement garage. The apartment uses water, the carpark does not. But guess what? Yep – she gets two separate water bills, despite the garage neither using water, nor making / disposing of water, no sewer, no rain water pipes, no fresh water in, not hot water, zero H2O in any way. Yet still gets a bill. That pisses me off, so I wrote in the comments:

“Will Peet ! How about making your first real move on the water front a good one? Why not simply front foot this unfolding disaster, by seizing the bull by the horns, and saying quickly and publicly:
“If a property has no water coming in or going out, then we will simply cancel that water bill, completely.”

That would gain you huge political goodwill, and save you a whole mass of the deeply irritating advertising campaign, and would clear up a whole pile of bad issues right from day one. So then you can simply say to Ceridwyn Roberts and her basement car park bill – Don’t pay it, we will cancel this. As there is no water going in, or going out, there can never be a water meter there, nor any need for one, and so just scrap the account. Completely, totally, and immediately. Do it now.“

I don’t understand why we can’t get better Chief Executives of companies – someone who has some sense of how to manage public expectations first off. Will Peet is apparently the (current/former?) head of Site Safe and “has been an independent director on the board since 2021. A civil engineer, he’s been involved in construction through the rail and defence industries and has worked overseas from America to Afghanistan to Antarctica to Aitutaki. Based in Wellington, Will works as an independent director and advisor and is a member and chair of several major project governance groups.” I’ve got a lot of time for engineers, they are some of the nicest and most competent people out there – almost as good as architects, but, you know, not nearly… but Tiaki Wai – you need to step up and handle things !

Some people are getting really het up about this, understandably so, as the projected increases are horrific! I’ve no idea if the following numbers are true or not, but this is an example from somewhere on the interwebs, forecasting over the next decade:

Basically, a former office building is structurally unstable with columns buckling under its own weight, which is a VERY BAD THING. I’m surprised it is not all over the news here – it certainly is over the news in New York!

The building is, in a quirk of irony / fate, the former office building of Pfizer, famous for its rock hard erections that never go soft, and yet that seems to be exactly the problem here. Situated at 235 East 42nd Street, right near 2nd Avenue, the building is therefore right at the heart of everything – just a block down the road from the Chrysler Building, still the loveliest skyscraper in the world.

The project was a massive conversion job from offices into apartments, but has suddenly started going rather flacid and bending like a soft banana. That’s never a good thing. Columns are meant to be straight, not bent, and stay vertical and erect, not bending in the middle – that’s a disaster! There was going to be some 1600 new apartments completed by some time next year – might have to delay the programme a bit here guys! City Buildings Commissioner Ahmed Tigani has confirmed that the existing 22 storey building was having 11 new stories added to the top, and that the fault is somewhere between level 17 and 21. No kidding – yes, we can see that directly below the new addition, the existing columns have given up the ghost and decided to go down the route of all who give up under pressure – a buckling at the knees, and a slow descent towards the floor.

I imagine that many lawyers and insurance companies have been contacted already. They have already closed off the street to pedestrian and to traffic – but of course it is just down the road from Grand Central Station, the busiest underground train station IN THE WHOLE WORLD and if the building was to collapse, that could also destroy infrastructure underground as well. It is marginally stable at this point, but if it continues to collapse, then all hell will break out.

New York Times says:

“Before columns buckled inside a Midtown Manhattan office tower on Tuesday, a private firm conducted several inspections of major structural alterations being done at the site — and apparently signed off on at least some of them, records and interviews show. The firm, Domani Inspection Services, certified the safety of high strength bolting, steel welding and the structural stability of changes being made as part of an ambitious project to transform the offices into a 37-story apartment building. It was not clear whether any of the work inspected by Domani contributed to the failure of columns on the 21st floor of the building. But a New York Times examination of the inspection company’s record has found that it has been repeatedly cited for missing warning signs at other building projects in the city. The damage at the building, at 235 East 42nd Street, forced the evacuation of several other buildings throughout the area, disrupting workplaces and choking off a vital thoroughfare during a time of peak tourism. The disruption has placed scrutiny on the future of office-to-residential conversions as a creative and efficient solution to the city’s crippling housing shortage.“

So – major rework needed, including finding some way of stopping any further collapse and also finding some way of jacking the falling floors back upwards again, but the developer Nathan Berman, managing principal and founder of MetroLoft, the developer overseeing the conversion, said on Tuesday that “this incident is nothing more than a typical construction mishap.”

Not sure that I would exactly describe this as a “typical construction mishap” maybe more like a serious cock-up and near miss. Anyway, as I have been reading continuous updates on this all day Thursday (our time) it now seems to have been stabilised by their Wednesday – with some seriously munty big SHS columns welded into place to make sure that nothing goes any further. Disaster averted. Lawsuits still to come. And, after that, I’m not sure that any one will ever want to buy a condo from Metroloft in this building. Still, people have short memories, so it is nothing that a name change and a rebrand can’t fix.

There’s a simple answer, and right off the back I would go to that: Wellington, the Hutts (both Upper and Jabba) and the Porirua should all unite as one.

Wairarapa should combine Featherston, Cartertown, Geytown, and Masterton with Martinborough and maybe even Eketahuna, to become another larger organisation, but I don’t think that we should really have them join us down here.

So far, so easy. The real question comes when we consider the Kapiti Coast. Does Pukerua feel part of Wellington, or further north? Def part of us. Does Paekakariki feel part of Wellington? Absolutely, yes, thats us too. What about Paraparaumu? Yes, that too. Waikanae? That feels more like it is the edge, but it is still us. Levin? No way. Levin and those north should partner up with Palmerston and other flat-landers and swamp-dwellers.

But perhaps we need something more sophisticated and advanced rather than just a fish pontificating (you know that the mark of the Pontif is that of a Fish, don’t you?).

Maps. We need maps. We need natural boundaries. Existing boundaries. All the boundaries. Maori boundaries. Pakeha boundaries. Flying bird boundaries. Electoral boundaries. Water boundaries. Sewerage collection boundaries. Yuck. Mountains! Streams! Lakes! Harbours !!!

OK – I’ll go research some boundaries, while you have a chat. In the mean time, here is our Mayor, A Little.

Starting off as she intended to carry on, on day one she cancelled the Ferry contract, losing NZ about a Billion dollars and about 5 years in progress, and she and her bitch protege Luxon have succeeded in screwing us royally ever since. This week’s proposed sacking of another 8700 civil servants (check out the story on Scoop of how many people that really means over here), with most of those (all of them?) in Wellington, they have at last fulfilled the prophecy of JohnKey who proclaimed Wellington dead. “They thought it was all over – well, it is Now!!” Worst. Finance. Minister. Ever.

So – it is clear that the jobs won’t be coming back – Kaitaia is now also completely fucked – so is Tokeroa – and Wairoa – and Dargaville – and everywhere. It is also clear that the Housing Market is fucked as well – having successfully engineered a housing price crash. So I too am now looking for a new job, a new house, a new town, a new life, because there is no point in staying here in this town. Shit still flows out to sea on all sides (Porirua, Moa Point, Sludge factory, Hutt Valley etc), and now that the wonderful Predator Free has got rid of all the small mammal pests, there is only one more mammal to get rid of, which Nicola is working on fast as we speak. It is clear that she will get voted out at the election in a few months time, and in the meantime she has evidently got plans to screw us all on the way.

Where to go next then? Auckland? Sydney? Perth? Hong Kong? London? Kazahkstan?

Post script: I should make the point that No, I have not yet lost my day job, although I’m sure that day will come one day. But as I have all my adult life as a Fish, I’m on the lookout for new opportunities to swim towards, and perhaps get hooked on, hoping that someone will get me on the line and haul me in. But as an Architect, living in a town with zero prospects of growth for the foreseeable future, and no likelihood of a sudden windfall to the population, meaning no new buildings, no new houses, ie no new work, there has to come a time when you say: Thanks for all the Fish.

News reaches me of The Architectural Centre putting on a Symposium, and that pleases me greatly. Friday May 15 & Saturday May 16.

Great idea – and well done to Arch Centre and to all involved, including Ken Davis, Frank Stark, Rachel Paschoalin, Rachel MacIntyre, Francisco Carbajal, Rob Tse, Liz Cowey, Arindam Sen, Cansu Inal Kaynar, and Athfield Architects:

This symposium responds to Rachel MacIntyre’s essay The Architect as repairer: the retrofit imperative. Focusing on her suggestion that “a cultural shift among architects” is required, “embracing imperfection, revealing the junctions between old and new, and prioritising reused or low-impact materials.” 

Our symposium asks, ‘when does adaptive reuse produce better architecture than building new?’ countering assumptions that mending a building is just making-do with what we already have, and that retrofit is merely a concession to energy, carbon &/or economic austerity.

We are leaving the definition of ‘better architecture’ deliberately broad because this is where we hope discussion will emerge. Implicitly we are suggesting that reuse and retrofit provides greater potential for things like:

• continuity in urban space while promoting an enrichment of urban experience
• spatial and material diversity by mixing existing and new building elements
• inventiveness, because the complexity of retrofit can challenge the design response.

The symposium will combine recent research, theoretical case studies and built examples to facilitate critical and open-ended discussion.

Schedule

Friday May 15

3:30 to 5:30pm _ Opening Panel

• Rachel MacIntyre (NZIA)
• Athfield Architects
• Rachel Paschoalin (Victoria University of Wellington)

Saturday May 16

9:30 to 11:00am _ The Case for Gordon Wilson Flats

The Gordon Wilson Flats were completed in 1959 and occupied until 2012. The final example of a series of housing innovations by the Office of the Government Architect, the decision to demolish the building was written into the Resources Management Amendment Act, 2025, as ‘section 85AAA.’

• Rob Tse (on line) – presenting design proposal developed as part of the Centre’s preservation advocacy.
• Francisco Carbajal (on line) – discussing carbon assessment processes relating to the preservation plan.
• Ken Davis – from writing the first history of Gordon Wilson up to his new research, Ken will provide an overview of the context of this building and just why the Centre has been concerned by its loss.

11:30 to 1:00pm _ Collage City

In riposte to Modern city planning ideals Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter coined the term ‘collage city’ (1978) to describe an urbanism where old and new buildings could be held in dynamic contrast. Today we might think in terms of sustainability enacted through adaptation, and diversity that supports resilience.

• Cansu Inal Kaynar – discussing enhancing sustainability and resilience through heritage buildings – the case of Whanganui.
• Lis Cowey – discussing her experience of Lina Bo Bardi’s SESC Pompeia in Barcelona.
• Foundation Architects – Arindam Sen – discussing the Meownui project

1:30 to 2:30pm _ The Case of 84 Taranaki Street

Built by the Winston Concrete Company in the late 1960s, this building was empty for many years before the Film Archive moved in and adapted it to create archive facilities and public facing venues. This presentation will discuss the process from the perspective of both client and architect/

• Frank Stark – ‘the client’
• Ken Davis – ‘the architect’

3:00 – 5:00pm _ propose and debate

This session will start with a quiz.

A student’s provocation will then direct discussion of the vignettes (5-10 min films profiling local and international projects) shown throughout the day.

BOOK HERE

There is a single EventBrite booking for this event. Please send an email after booking if you plan to also, or only, attend on Saturday. This is for catering purposes.

The event is being run on koha.

If you are in a position to financially support please help us out by making a direct payment to AC accounts (eg. $10 per day for catering), or consider joining/renewing you membership.

Account details:

06-0501-0160299-00
THE ARCHITECTURAL CENTRE INC

Slow off the mark here, I know, but i really needed some days of sunshine before i could write about the deluge of crap weather we’ve been having lately. I must say, though, that this city never ceases to amaze me. I mean, look at this picture below:

The video is as harrowing as hell – no-one’s front door should be doing imitations of a hydro dam. That was… quite a torrent. Clearly there is a problem with overflow route paths getting too real and far too close to floor level – ie arriving ABOVE floor level, and not passing underneath it. Here’s another overflow route misbehaving – from further up country I believe. But clearly beyond the capabilities of the under-capacity pipe under the road. Nothing that a few mega-girthed ducts under the road couldn’t fix.

I forget where some of these pictures have come from – this one obviously thanks to Stuff, but is it of a back road bush whackers access road? Or is it just the Ohiro Road, which is obviously the route of a stream as well as probably a fault line as well. There’s a lot of rubble coming down the street. Wellington Water sitting there thinking: “We’re going to need a bigger pipe…”

But not as much as the rubble coming down this person’s drive…. along with a torrent of water, which I understand that they were also finding coming through the house as well – so I think they were scooping up some of this rubble to form a rough boulder-bank, to help keep more of the water out. So, a lot of crap to clean up, but not a total disaster I hope. Good swift sensible action, but it also shows that our hills are not so much clay and mud, but instead fractured, weathered greywacke stone, that can be washed away piece by piece. I mean, that material belongs in a riverbed, not a driveway. But then again, also, that driveway is part of the problem. There’s an awful lot of non-porous surface right there.

More Ohiro Road – but where is the usual route for water? It is clearly a river-valley, so there should normally be a river / creek here, but from memory it does not usually come down next to the road.

And I think that this picture (below) is of the same Ohiro Road as shown above, but at the peak of the storm in the depths of the night – that’s a massive volume right there, cascading down the street.

Here’s a WCC ePlan picture of why:

There were undoubtedly a few cars washed away in that storm – below is one sad looking Mini that has washed down a stream. And possibly the house is going to join it.

Officially there was a peak flow of 77mm in an hour, which is probably just a typical Thursday if you live in Greymouth, but is more unusual in Wellington. But it is not completely unheard of or unprecedented in Poneke before – I recall 75mm about 20 years ago, where a sudden deluge in Taranaki Street flooded into a basement garage in Wakefield Street and there were photos of a brand new Beetle floating around in water 6 foot deep. And when the waters recede, they can leave surprises in choice of parking…

And: not enough pipes

That final picture, of a lake, is down the end of Emerson Street, Berhampore, and also the site of the carparking fence on the picture above. The reason it has turned from a quiet suburban street into a greasy brown lake, is because the City Council has built a concrete retaining wall across the end of the road, taking what was a natural watercourse and abruptly stopping it from working. But it is not like this was news – the retaining wall has been there for decades, and the area is noted on the WCC District Plan as being smack in the centre of a major flooding area.

Only made worse, of course, by the retaining wall curiously not shown, making this situation far, far worse. Here’s the context in the wider Berhampore region:

And another key area for flooding was just up the road a little: Palm Grove made a few headlines for inundation too, and here’s why.

We all know that corner, with the Grammercy bakery and badly timed traffic lights, sitting at the curious dip in the road. And now we can tell exactly why there is a curious dip: it’s Godrick’s Hollow, a conspiring confluence of conflicting contributionary streams rampaging through the working class housing in Berhampore. If you are wondering why your feet are always wet round there, this is why.

I’ll just finish up for now with another of Wellington’s repeating wonders of excessive irrigation: Island Bay. Not only is it a major route for tsunami inwards, it is also a logjam for waters trying to get out again. Never mind whinging about the cycleway, here’s the site of your shopping area and a prime zone for urban density. Maybe we don’t need to raise the height level so much as to raise the ground level?

Post script: Raising the ground level was what these developers did out at the Plimmerton roundabout – make a big tall compacted patch of gravel, clearly working fine on their site, but pushes even more water onto the sites next door. Flooding shown from April 18 2026 flood. Earthworks from the next mega-subdivision across the road (bottom right hand corner) caused extensive run-off (and horrid brown water) from all the land they are carving away at the edge of the Taupo Swamp. Future problems happening right now… Idiotic development !!