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 !!

For years now we have had a monopoly, with Architecture NZ being the sole magazine dedicated to Architecture in our fair isles. News on the horizon though, is that this is about to change. There are two other magazines in NZ that also talk architecture, namely HERE and also HOME. Both of these really concentrate mainly on Residential.

HOME is the rebirthed version of what used to be known as Home and Building, whereas HERE sprang up like a daisy during the curious Covid collapse of the print media market way back in 2020. During those dread dark days, a 20 year old upstart URBIS was wiped out, falling by the wayside and vanishing, seemingly without a trace. I’ve completely lost track as to who owns what, or who runs which, or who has written for whatever, wherever, whenever, somehow. But maybe Federico is the glue here?

Both URBIS and Arch NZ were owned by AGM, which since then has been brought out once, twice, maybe three times, and evidently the current owners have been talking about axing Arch NZ in the same manner as they destroyed URBIS. My gut feeling is that the two NZ magazines are looking a little TOO alike – HOME / HERE – similar graphic feel, similar projects, similar colour palette etc.

So, enter a new possible / probable magazine to the market: Architecture Aotearoa. It is being proposed by Federico Monsalve, who is a former editor of both URBIS and also Interior magazines (Interior also disappeared a couple of years back). He is a trained journalist (unlike us amateur writers here at the Fish). I think that he is possibly running HOME at present, and maybe AA in the future. His work has appeared in a range of local and international media including Granny Herald, Monocle, ARTnews etc. Watch out for Architecture Aotearoa on your shelves soon, we need to support both our titles.

There is a curious stand-offishness between the real press world and the pretendy one that the Fish lives in. The Eye of the Fish only exists because of the lack of a local alternative and the beneficent attitude of a Melbourne-based lecturer Philip Belesky, who still pays for the funding of this increasingly large and periodically sluggish website: TheEyeoftheFish.org where I (and you) still hang out. But the real world publishers never acknowledge that we exist. Perhaps we don’t. Maybe I am actually a figment of my own imagination.

It is curious though, to propose to launch a new magazine in the midst of a deep and never-ending recession, in a market segment which is already suffering, with sponsors and advertisers daily falling by the wayside. Overseas magazines do not appear to be suffering as much as us here, and their mags are stuffed with ads for high end goods and services. Particularly pertinent these days when everything appears to be going online, and when both magazine stores and letter boxes are a vanishing breed. I mean, does Wellington actually HAVE a magazine store these days? Magnetix has gone, does the store in the old Post Office Square still exist? Is there anywhere else still alive?

We (Wellington), are an erudite population on that basis, beating off the likes of Auckland and Christchurch with a stick. Our city has fought long and hard for this result – as long and as hard as Christchurch fought for the retention of their Town Hall, where the people of the city had to fight tooth and nail against the Fat Controller: the Terror of TinyTown, the Right Honourable BullyBoy Brownlee, who wanted to simply demolish the Warren and Mahoney masterpiece that is the Chch Town Hall. Thank goodness the town did not submit there, and thank goodness also that we did not submit here either. Really, leaving your city in the hands of non-architects is always a risky business.

Like you readers, I’ve been following along the process of the potential demolition / great saving / ultimate remediation of the Library, and so this week, after many years hard work, we get to enjoy the benefits. The issue was not that the building suffered damage, or was going to fall down when it was closed, but instead an overly cautious bean-counter’s view of the world, that once they were told that it had potential weaknesses, then they had “no option” but to close the whole thing down, or even demolish and rebuild. Luckily we have a number of hardened campaigners who were not going to take that decision lying down, including architects (thank you to the cast of thousands!!), engineers (thank you Adam Thornton!), former City Councillors (thank you Helene Ritchie!), and probably many book readers as well (thank you all of Wellington). Hooray to you all for turning this ship around and getting the Council to restore it instead of demolish it. Bravo! Thinking back to that day many years back, I don’t think that aanyone dared to put their head above the parapet and say: “Knock it down”, although there was a lot of muttering from the Gov / Council that “Christchurch has a groovy new Library, why can’t we have one too!?”.

The architects, originally, were Athfield Architects, and they were renominated once more, this time working in a partnership with a Te Ati Awa / Tihei rep, Rangi Kipa, ensuring that the revised building has a more solid iwi connection to the land. The engineers, despite a brilliantly persuasive discussion on strengthening many years ago from Adam Thornton, was ____ ? Was it Holmes? And contractors were of course Naylor Love ? Or was it LT McGuiness? Whoever it was, yes, they have made a brilliant job out of it.

It is surprising to me, however, that so much of the building looks exactly like it was before – has the HVAC system been replaced or is all the ducting just the same ones, finished with a fresh coat of paint? Thankfully the tired old “fluffy clouds” of sound absorbtion blanket have been ditched, and the thousands of newly welded brackets holding the concrete floor planks in place have at long last been covered by a nice new white ceiling.

One thing that is stridently new and definitely not there before however, is the giant criss cross columns reinforcing the building, painted a bold reddish brown throughout the floors, and appearing like a jungle thicket on the ground floor. A plethora of posts. A concubine of columns. A zig full of zags. Enough columns to keep everyone happy, even the most seismic-averse people amongst us.

On the opening day, as many of you know, there were several thousand people queueing up to get in, while I went along a few days later to capture some photos. I hope I was not too late. More to come !

When I first heard that the Pooh had escaped, I said, just as you are going to say, “But I thought we had a Sludge Screen?”

“So did I,” said Mayor Andy. “But I can smell that something is off.”

“Then you can’t call him Windy?”

“I don’t.”

“But you said——”

“He’s Windy-ther-Pooh. Don’t you know what ‘ther‘ means?”

“Ah, yes, now I do,” I said quickly; and I hope you do too, because it is all the explanation you are going to get.

Sometimes Windy-the-Pooh likes a game of some sort when he comes into town, and sometimes he likes to sit quietly in front of the fire and listen to a story. This evening——

“What about a story?” said Windy.

“What about a story?” I said.

“Could you very sweetly tell Windy-the-Pooh one?”

“I suppose I could,” I said. “What sort of stories does he like?”

“About himself. Because he’s that sort of Pooh.”

“Oh, I see.”

“So could you very sweetly?”

“I’ll try,” I said.

So I tried.

Once upon a time, a very long time ago now, about last Friday, Windy-the-Pooh lived at the beach all by himself under the name of Moa Point.

(“What does ‘under the name’ mean?” asked Princess Veolia, frantically looking for an escape clause to escape this awful mess they had got themselves into.

“It means he had the name over the door in gold letters, and lived under it.“

“Windy-the-Pooh wasn’t quite sure,” said Princess Veolia, hoping that by calling themselves Wellington Water, and then selling their asses to the Luxurious Government, they could escape from having to do any maintenance at all.

“Now I am,” said a growly voice.

“Then I will go on,” said I.)

One day when he was out walking, he came to a cliff face on the edge of the airport, right next to a lovely beach, and tucked away right at the back of this place was a large sewerage plant. From the bottom of the sewerage plant, there came a loud buzzing and banging-noise, along with a terrible smell.

Windy-the-Pooh sat down at the foot of the plant, put his head between his paws and began to think.

First of all he said to himself: “That buzzing and banging-noise means something. You don’t get a buzzing and banging-noise like that, just buzzing and banging, without its meaning something. If there’s a buzzing-noise, somebody’s making a buzzing-noise, and the only reason for making a buzzing-noise that I know of is because you’re a broken discharge pipe that’s about to blow.”

Then he thought another long time, and said: “And the only reason for being a discharge pie that I know of is for discharging Pooh.”

And then he got up, and said: “And the only reason for discharging Pooh is so as I don’t have to smell it.” So he began to investigate the sewerage plant.

He climbed and he climbed and he climbed, and as he climbed he sang a little song to himself. It went like this:

Isn’t it funny

How a corporate likes money?

Buzz! Buzz! Buzz!

I wonder why they does?

Then Pooh climbed a little further … and a little further … and then just a little further. By that time he had thought of another song.

It’s a very funny thought that, if Corporations were Considerate,

They’d build their sewer plants far away from the people and the fishes.

And that being so (if Corporations were Considerate),

We shouldn’t have to swim up through all this pooh.

He was getting rather tired by this time, so that is why he sang a Complaining Song. He was nearly there now, and if he just stood on that branch …

Crack!

“Oh, help!” said Pooh, as he dropped ten feet on the beach below him.

“If only I hadn’t——” he said, as he bounced twenty feet on to the next beach.

“You see, what I meant to do,” he explained, as he turned head-over-heels, and crashed on to another beach thirty feet along, “what I meant to do——”

“Of course, it was rather——” he admitted, as he slithered very quickly through the next six coral branches.

“It all comes, I suppose,” he decided, as he said good-bye to the last branch, spun round three times, and flew gracefully into a gorse-bush, “it all comes of liking money so much. Oh, help!”

He crawled out of the gorse-bush, brushed the prickles from his nose, and began to think again. And the first person he thought of was Wellington Water.

(“Was that me?” said Wellington Water in an awed voice, hardly daring to believe it.

“Yes, that was you.“

Wellington Water said nothing, but their eyes got larger and larger, and their faces got pinker and pinker.)

“Gosh, damn and bother it all, we thought that we had got away with all that shit!”

So Andy the Mayor went round to his friend Christopher Luxon, who lived behind a green door in another part of the forest.

“Let’s wait and see who has to pay for this…”

He was a lovely man – still is – kind, considerate, compassionate, not at all egomaniacal, the complete opposite of the black polo neck jersey-wearing egomaniacal tosser that the Press likes to portray us as. Such a lovely human – he will be sorely missed.

Post-script: Of course, he is so much more than just an Architect, he is also a husband, a father, a benevolent benefactor, a decorated member of the Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit (should have been a Knighthood !), bestowed upon him by my favourite Governor General Dame Cindy Kiro,

…as well as an intrepid explorer to Antarctica to restore the ancient old huts that were being slowly but steadily destroyed by the relentless ingress of ice dust, and of course, the originator of a wonderful memorial way up north in the Bay of Islands – commemorating the first Christian service in Aotearoa.

This is a tribute to Pip’s mind – a mixture of the traditional (rammed earth walls similar to the Pompalier House and of course some traditional Māori building techniques), and the latest feats from the America’s Cup boat-building team – a soaring roof off into the distance. Farewell young man, let your spirit fly free….

Post post-script

from the Britomart group, a lovely tribute:

We are mourning the loss of Pip Cheshire, who died on February 11 after a short illness. As an architect, an agitator, a visionary, a colleague and a friend, Pip was an inspiring and integral presence in the 21-year regeneration of Britomart. To put it another way: he was part of our family.

His involvement with Britomart goes back to the start. In the late 1990s, as managing director of Jasmax, he oversaw the design, with Mario Madayag and Greg Boyden, of the Britomart Transport Centre and the nine-block district to its east. Soon afterward, he founded Cheshire Architects; he and his small firm occupied a floor of the Maritime Building along with us and have remained deeply involved in imagining the future of Britomart to this day.

Pip’s achievements are extraordinary in their breadth: a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to architecture; the 2013 Te Kāhui Whaihanga NZ Institute of Architects Gold Medal for lifetime achievement; a five-year stint as an adjunct professor at the University of Auckland Waipapa Taumata Rau; designing striking and ground-breaking buildings including the Congreve House in Takapuna, Q Theatre, the Leigh Marine Laboratory and many more. He also had a pivotal role in the design of Te Papa, and in the preservation of Antarctic heritage huts in the Ross Sea. As President of Te Kāhui Whaihanga New Zealand Institute of Architects from 2014-2016, he championed the development of Te Kawenata o Rata, a covenant that formalises an ongoing collaborative relationship between the Institute and the Māori design collective Ngā Aho. He was also Aileen’s husband, Nat, Finn and Hal’s father, and a grandfather to four grandchildren.

If you didn’t know Pip, we recommend you watch the video that accompanied the announcement of his NZIA Gold Medal, as it gives a good sense of him. “I think that architecture’s always had a responsibility to the public realm,” he says in it. “You’ve got to leave the place better than you find it.” Pip was born in Christchurch but had a furious passion for the possibilities of Auckland as a city. We will miss him immensely, but we are comforted by the knowledge that he undoubtedly leaves his adopted hometown a far better place than he found it.

I’ll spare you the details of the trip, namely driving hither and yon, due to our complete absence of a functioning public transport system, so steel wheels were out and rubber wheels were in, with the Fish-mobile plumbed into the network of high-octane fuel that knits our country together.

Regular supply stops for ice-creams and bottom un-numbing made for a pleasant trip, taking the back-road all the way (now now, stop thinking that way), and all doable on basically one full tank of gas. I would far rather have taken a train, and to take the whole fam-damily on the plane would have been ethically bad and financially ruinous, so windows down, elbows out, and we said hello to many cows and sheep along the way. Can you recognise any of our delectable small town highlights? Subtlety is optional in small town.

We arrived in the land of the Aucks late on a Sunday afternoon – 3pm via the Motorway system, so where else better to go than to sample the new IKEA store and the nordic shopping experience. IKEA opened just before Christmas and apparently it has been manic ever since, with the Swedes basically selling out of almost everything, including all their food supplies and many trinkets. But now they have restocked (except for the colourful rug that Mrs Fish liked the look of) and even have a never-ending supply of Swedish meatballs to sample. Personally, the meatballs are bland and boring and I can make better ones myself, or the ones that the small Fish make which are far more tasty. But we’re not here to talk balls, great or small, meaty or salty, sweaty or sweet. We’re here to talk IKEA.

For those of you that have not been to an IKEA before, it is a different sort of shopping experience. It is not a shop – it is a labyrinth of wiggly routes through and an endless array of cool Nordicness. I keep wanting to say Danish design, although of course it is from Sweden, but curiously in South Auckland, the clientele was almost entirely Chinese or Indian. Perhaps I am Chinese and / or Indian too. But I don’t want to get into ethnic discussions again – almost got myself into trouble on that last time – but I am wondering, will the arrival of IKEA and all its Swedishness mean that the tastes of the average Aucklander may visually change from pattenation into blandness, sleekness and proto-Euro modernism?

Everything is gloriously presented in unashamed dual language information – English and Swedish – every product has a name, and every name is Swedish first and another Nordic word approximation second – is that second word Danish or is is a description? The English description is in the fine print. What is a Enhet vs a Tvallen? Who cares? Does it matter? It’s cheap as chips!

If you don’t believe me that it is cheap as chips, how much do you think a small tea-light is? What about a small glass tea-light holder? So cheap, you may as well buy a dozen while you’re at it. And the actual tea-lights themselves, that fit inside the tiny glass cups? Literally only cents. I think, maybe, 12 cents each? Buy them in packs of 20 or 40 or maybe 100.

Some of the names were like old friends to me, from my days way back a few decades ago when living in the UK, where I went under duress with my friends (once and only once), to the joys of the “Brent Cross Gyratory” aka the home of IKEA in London. It was shoppaholic heaven – but my own private hell – so much rampant consumerism at a time when I barely had two farthings to rub together, nor a giant cubic Volvo to take it all home again. Volvo? I couldn’t even afford a Vulva! or a Lada.

But I remember Billy and I remember the Stig, although I thought he used to be always dressed in white and not speak a lot. Here, the Stig just sat quietly on a shelf, plotting revenge against the Clarkson.

There were, of course, many things that I could have bought, and almost did, until I remembered the already overcrowded car back in the parking lot. Hmmm. Perhaps not the Branas storage unit then – although if it was still in a flatpack state, then I could maybe assemble it later? But then – isn’t there always one missing screw? Or a lapsed Allen Key? I must confess though – I was sorely tempted. I could buy the wicker boxes too and then store all my stuff in boxes within a boxy Branas!

Having designed a million kitchens and bathrooms in my time (who in this line of work has not?) I was fairly amazed at the low cost of the fixtures and fittings. I coveted the Uppdatera, as you do, for a ridiculous low price, but we have remained un-Updatera’d for many years now so why would i really need one now? So I shall remain un-updated for good…

Would it make me somehow more Swedishly organised? Would my knives and spoons stay just as separated? Why not, in fact, but a whole new set of cutlery while you’re there? Why not simply Marie Kondo your entire existing battered and chipped pottery life out the window and buy a new one?

The kitchens of course were gorgeous in their minimalism, and having once had a client back in 2001 who wanted a $90,000 kitchen imported from Italy, I was sorely tempted to price a replacement unit from Sweden, probably for less than one tenth of the price. And without the Italian designer tantrums that we had to put up with back then.

The final step in the labyrinthine journey takes you through the final warehouse section and then the self-checkout gates – why not get a giant blue and yellow bag to take your purchases home? – and a last minute brandishing of Mr Visa’s finest product, to bring me up to a staggeringly large total of stuff that I really didn’t think had cost that much – but which has already slipped effortlessly into the morass of trinkets and knick-knacks that make up the detritus of our modern life. I don’t think anything has actually been Marie Kondo’d yet, my new purchases just adding to the pile of crap already in existence.

But I am wondering how long our existing jobs can go on, designing things for clients and getting them specially built, when all you really need to do now is to open up a web page and point and click, and a week later assemble it into something resembling a cool piece of Skandi noir. So many choices. So many options. But: throw out the old stuff first. Go give it to the local Harry Potter Hospice Shop.