Round Up

This post is not sponsored by Monsanto. This blog is currently being sponsored by Melbourne School of Design’s Incubator, if you hadn’t noticed. Please check out their new and very generous competition for relocatable schools.

+ Melbourne Open House is getting close, with media coverage increasing. Grand Designs (Oz) presenter Peter Maddison is the ‘ambassador’. He recommends a visit to the vault in the Land Titles Office,: ‘‘an interwoven three-storey vertical space with narrow walkways and spiral stairs all made from hot riveted steel, solid-slate shelving and bluestone, and is untouched from the 1880s. You can understand the emphasis we place on freehold land ownership when you visit this one.’‘ The Age

+ The HIA has been continuing their anti-carbon tax media barrage now that the cost per tonne has been announced, and are arguing that six star ratings are enough. A tax on carbon will apparently put some families off building new homes. Tony Wood from the Grattan Institute sniffs at this, saying, “What you want to do is convince government that the sky is about to fall and it’s all terrible and they need to give you compensation.” The Age

+ Robert Bevan writes in the Oz about Pin Up, a small gallery in Collingwood featuring architectural installations. He believes it to be the only one in the country. “If there are any rich Australian architecture patrons out there, the time to step forward is now.” And…

“In the absence of a national centre or museum for architecture, Australia’s architectural legacy has neither an archive to safeguard the past nor a national forum for discussing the future… The Australian Institute of Architects, while engaged with the Venice Architecture Biennale, has not made a priority of architecture exhibitions at home.” The Oz#

+ Just in: SLANT Garden Competition

+ [ deleted by request ]

+ If Diversism isn’t your bag, perhaps try Performativity, which promotes better involvement in the building process.

“It’s about grabbing those territories back that have systematically been given away by our profession over the past 30 years… For us, that is the core of performance-based design. Think about what the buildings do, how they work, how they’re put together. What are the politics behind it? What’s the finance behind it? What’s the technology behind it? How’s it going to engage a city?” Gregg Pasquarelli, SHoP Architects New Yorker

Auckland

For the past week I’ve been snooping around Auckland. The weather was appalling, but from what I could see from under my umbrella…

+ the Queens Wharf cloud is nearing completion. This is what was built after it was decided that the Queens Wharf competition winner was not affordable or appropriate. It is an $8M tent that will apparently be shipped down to Christchurch after the Rugby World Cup.

+ Within 40 minutes I had walked through the sites of three upended competitions, all of which I had been silly enough to enter. Before Queens Wharf was the Matiatia Bay competition on Waiheke Island, where the brief was to cater to the rapid growth in the number of ferry commuters, who were parking all over the road and in ditches to avoid a daily fee. That was all too hard though, and instead they have widened the road. After Queens Wharf I fought my way through the carpark that is Te Wero Island to see what had become of the new twisting traffic bridge, won by DCM. At some point that design was ditched and replaced by a rather less radically hinged pedestrian bridge. Oh well, you can’t win them all… or in this case any.

+ Against this backdrop of failed competitions, The Auckland Architecture Association recently wrote a response to the Auckland Unleashed draft strategic plan, which amongst other things advocated, “Competition based procurement for all public work with a frame of reference being strongly based on designed outcomes and / or peer recognition rather than building type and experience focus.” AAA PDF AUCKLAND PLAN

+ The Auckland Plan is an interesting read. Auckland is trying to increase its ‘liveability’ score to remain ‘globally competitive’, but like many other middle-sized 20th Century cities, it has a big problem with cars, clogged roads, and ageing infrastructure. 300,000 or so new houses are needed by 2030 but the city is already too spread out, and the complicated geography of the isthmus prevents much further growth within cooee of the city. Public transport is having a hard time keeping up. There has been a lot of effort on this front but it has mainly been restricted to the city south of the harbour bridge, where old rail lines have been boosted. The rapidly extending North Shore urban area is still without rail. Tricky.

+ Speaking of cars, and the desire to quietly eradicate them from our suffering cities, Richard Florida wrote last week in the Atlantic that getting people out of cars is not simply a matter of increasing density or living closer in, though both are important. Research by the University of Maine also reveals that average temperature, rainfall, and occupation play a big part. It helps if you are a ‘creative’ living in an old house in a cold climate where it doesn’t rain a lot. Most houses built in the U.S. between 2000 and 2006 is, “negatively associated with the percentage of people who bike, walk or take public transit to work.” [ via planetizen ]

+ More stats from the U.S. back up recent local articles suggesting that new peripheral single detached housing is becoming less suitable to the needs of the population. “Non-family households” are fast catching up with family households and their needs are quite different. CNBC [ also via the ever watchful planetizen ]

+ To finish the Auckland trip, I journeyed up the hill (by taxi) to check how the photography went at a recently completed reno in Grey Lynn. No photos yet so I snapped a few between the rainstorms.

Posted by Peter on 18.07.11 in random debris