news
From green wedge to green short back and sides
Victorian Planning Minister’s long proposed 430 square km extension to the Urban Growth Boundary for Melbourne has just received the “green” light from government, in a rare show of bipartisan unity from the major parties.
29.07.10 in urban-planning
Slug rubs Shed 10
In a compromise decision if there ever was one, powers that be in Auckland have decided to keep one of the two 98 year old industrial sheds on Queens Wharf, and to build a temporary $9M tent next to it. This was thought to be for Rugby World Cup hoons to party in and so was named “Party Central”. NZ Prime Minister John Keys has jumped into the fray of clamouring pollies to say that he doesn’t think people will actually be getting drunk there.
29.07.10 in heritage
Bill Mitchell, 1944 - 2010
Melbourne alumnus William J. Mitchell died last month after a long fight with cancer. He was 65.
22.07.10 in computing
Calling overseas
Australian working as an architect overseas? Send your details to Architecture Australia now. AA is compiling two lists for a forthcoming issue on the theme of Export – they are:
05.07.10 in call-for-submissions magazines
Melton gets even bigger
ABC News announced tonight that the Melton North subdivision is proceeding. 1,300 houses spread over 106 hectares, this suburb will be much smaller than Toolern , just East of Melton, where 2,500 rural hectares are currently being suburbanised. The Precinct Structure Plan is also a lot smaller. It has a few words to say about encouraging higher density living around Neighbourhood Activity Centres, but the detail paints a different picture. Lots between 250 and 300 square metres will not require a planning permit for a single house. So smaller lots will require a planning permit? Is that encouraging?
04.07.10 in urban-planning
Convention dictates
NH ‘carted’ away four tubes of paper tonight – various awards for their convention centre on Melbourne’s Yarra. It looks like a fine piece of work, but I’ve never stepped over the threshold – not a great convention attendee. Looking at the Convention Centre website , they only have two conferences booked in the next three months. Must be the off season.
25.06.10 in awards
Comment [4]
Sun sets on Fed Square
Looks like something worth seeing at Federation Square, Melbourne. A giant sun is hovering there for a while, and you don’t need to look at it through funny glasses. Probably best to see it at night, unlike the real thing.
04.06.10 in artists
Animal Kingdom
Still in a daze from having seen Animal Kingdom , a pic about Melbourne’s crime world in the Eighties, even though it’s set in the present day. It’s core event is loosely based on the Walsh Street police killings in 1988. The South Yarra crime scene has moved to Hawthorn, but it still has a Holden Commodore sitting abandoned in the middle of the street. It’s a disturbing film for many Melburnians, but worth watching for the haunting performances of Jacki Weaver and Ben Mendelsohn. And for a less “Tourism Victoria” picture of Melbourne. Rather than a city of trams and trees, we see shipyards, servos, suburbs, and lots of Holdens.
04.06.10 in films
Main Street malls
In 2008, Wollongong City Council hired the NSW Government Architect’s Office to fix the Crown Street Mall. The 1986 pedestrian mall is ageing, dominated by a huge tubular steel ‘birdcage’ symbolising the area’s old reliance on the steel industry, and is visually clogged by centrally placed planters and street furniture. Pedestrian counts in the areas surrounding the Gateway have been dropping.
04.06.10 in urban-design
Comment [2]
Sharing it around
Richard Rogers on Rogers Stirk Harbour:
29.05.10 in practice
Architect / protaganist:
Fat house, fat car
The Age tells us that Melbourne’s largest display home is open for insection in Point Cook. People aren’t too interested in it and there won’t be any more at that size. It’s 52 whopping squares, or 481 square metres, or 52 Holden Commodore sedans they tell us. What? It seems the Commodore is becoming a unit measure. That will no doubt please Holden’s PR department.
23.05.10 in housing
Melbourne in miniature
A new 90 hectare suburb in Tianjin, China, is set to get a Melbourne theme. This doesn’t mean that it will be encouraged to sprawl with inadequate public transport, we ‘re talking more of a postcard version of Melbourne.
22.05.10 in urban-planning weird-wonderful
Clothes heaps in New York
Piles of clothes tend to broadcast to me the concept that I should wash them. But not always. Here’s a pic from a show now on at the Park Avenue Armory in New York. That’s up the road a bit from The State Armory where that chap R.Mutt submitted a urinal for a show in 1917.
16.05.10 in sustainability insulation