Institutional origins 

1905 NZIA Auckland Branch president Edward Bartley .

One from the Really Old Web. I think I have just stumbled across the issue that caused New Zealand architects to unite and form an institute (now known as the NZIA ). Way back in 1905 the builders of New Zealand, having formed the NZ Federated Association of Builders, were trying to introduce a standardised building contract. This lead to an “acute” disagreement between architects and builders, causing much construction to halt.

The Wellington Association of Builders tried to clarify the dispute for the Evening Post in a letter of September 18th, 1905. Here are some extracts.

Some [contracts] were so one-sided and stringent that when those concerned went to a legal man for advice, they were told that it was a waste of time to advise builders who were mad enough to sign… so it was determined to endeavour to get one uniform set of general conditions for the colony…

The question then arose as to the best means to adopt to get the desired change. It was found that only one or two centres had Associations of Architects – and these might be called dead. In other centres (Wellington included) there was no such association, so it was deemed impossible at that stage to approach the architects, there being no cohesion between them, and each centre thinking, as they still think, that their own particular set of conditions was the best in the colony.

I well remember that the clause that provides for the payment of 1 1/2 per cent. by the successful contractor to the architect for working drawings was one of the bones of contention…

It was decided that each Builder’s Association should approach on a given date the architects in their own district, and get them to adopt them…

So the Wellington builders tried to come to an arrangement in February 1905 with the five or six Wellington architects who responded to their invitation to discussions. In July the architects rejected most of the clauses. The sticking clauses for architects of the day concerned what we now call the Defects Liability Period and Retentions – troublesome today. The builders were most unhappy that these architects were suggesting a “maintenance period” of “six months and more”. Back to the letter:

If there is one thing these conditions will do, they will make the architect more particular as to how he draws his plans, and especially more particular as to how he draws up his specifications. They want to be straightforward and plain, so that there can be only one meaning to them…

[Builders] have sought to confer with the architects; but unfortunately whilst the builders are united, and therefore strong, the architects are so many units, jealous of each other. When they join hands and send delegates with the power to act, the New Zealand builders will be only to glad to meet them and give them a good time, too.

The builders suggested a twleve month trial of the new conditions. Ten days later, an Evening Post reporter spoke to a “leading architect” and learnt that the architects were about to take action.

It is understood that while the Wellington architects are willing to have a conference, they desire that it shall be one representative of the whole of the colony on each side. The machinery for this already exists in the NZFAB, but the architects of this country are not yet similarly banded. An institute is now being formed in Wellington, however, and a meeting is to be held next Monday to draw up rules, etc… Steps are being taken to form with the least possible delay a Federation of New Zealand Architects that will be able to make definite and binding arrangements on behalf of the architects of the colony in all matters affecting their interests.”

The institute was quickly established, and all was sorted by the end of the year.

From the Otautau Standard and Wallace County Chronicle, October 31, 1905 .

02.09.10 in guilds practice

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Birdcage slide  

The old Birdcage hotel in Auckland is sliding very slowly up the hill to temporarily make room for a new tunnel (which will help that city’s enormous traffic jams for a wee while). The move is pretty slow, as this time lapse shows, as the old brick hotel was not very strong in the first place. The last thing it needed was to be put on skates.

This old pile is only 760 tonnes, a mere tot compared to the biggest building moved in New Zealand. Back in 1993 the recently built Michael Fowler Hotel was shifted around a corner and across the road . All 3,500 tonnes of it, furniture included. It’s now called the Museum Hotel but is known to locals as the “Hotel de Wheels”.

I once suggested to a client that they cut their timber house in half and move one half 3 metres towards the street. Easy way out of a tricky heritage situation. A house removalist quoted the job at only $10K, but I suspect the clients thought I was bonkers. Lost that job..

01.09.10 in buildings weird-wonderful

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Making the shift 

I have been scratching my head for way too long over this one. My laptop has been dying you see, it is getting slower and slower and nothing will speed it up. The battery is kaput as is one of the USB ports and the DVD drive. Plastic panels keep falling off the bottom, and a crack formed on the top after a few weeks. It likes to turn itself off when it gets hot, but doesn’t save anything when it dies. Its fan sounds like an old car on start up. It is less than three years old, and it has always been a turkey.

A major contributing factor to its turkey status is its dodgy operating system, Vista Business. I was foolish to buy it, and loathe it from top to bottom. I have had to turn off most of its bling to get it to work at a semi-decent pace, so it looks like Windows 98 now. Way too much time is spent looking at a spinning wheel, as I wait for Vista to do whatever it has decided to do.

So I’m over it. The operating system, and its badly designed Asus container. The thought of staring at the Windows desktop environment for another three years does not fill me with excitement.

Today I took the plunge and ordered a Macbook Pro – my first since Mac since the early ’90s. I will put this PC in the e-waste pile next to three dead PCs and enter the pricier locked-down world of Mac. I am wary of it, but more than anything need a different environment to spend my working days in, and Mac OSX will provide it, for better or worse. The extra cost (a good $700 or so) is worth it for me just for that.

Having wanted to punish Microsoft for the time lost using Vista, and fixing websites to work on Internet Explorer, I made an inconsistent last minute decision to add Windows 7 to the Mac build – so I can still use all those obscure bits of software I rely upon for web design. Old habits die hard. I wouldn’t have done it but the cost of adding Windows 7 Pro to the Mac is half that of getting an upgrade for my near dead PC, or buying it off the shelf later.

For architect types, the ratio of offices using Macs to those using PCs varies from city to city. This seems largely dependent on which is the common CAD software used in a town. Auckland is a bit of an ArchiCAD town, so they use a lot of Macs. Melbourne is largely devoted to AutoCAD, so Macs are less common, though maybe some may be running it on Mac using Parallels . Today’s news that AutoCAD is once again going to natively support the Mac (including iPhones and iPads) may allow some architects to reconsider the Mac.

Those looking around the web for a comparison of Mac OSX with Windows 7 will encounter pages of vitriol from hard core Mac and PC “fan boys”. For a more balanced look at the two operating systems, you could try this vid:

Or for a less balanced and violent look at the platform battle:

I will try to remember to post about this again in a couple of months, when we’ll see if I’m tearing my hair out with OSX frustration, or I’ve become a Mac fan boy. Or, like the guy in the video, maybe I’ll end up liking both of them for different reasons.

31.08.10 in computing 

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squint/opera TV  

Oh dear my inbox is getting a bit full. Sorry if you’ve sent something in and I haven’t gotten to it.

The always interesting architectural communications mob Squint/Opera have the big LED TV in Fed Square to themselves this month – well for an hour a day. So pop down there around 5.30p.m. or 12.30a.m. to see what they’ve been up to. It finishes at the end of August.

Here’s a peek. More here

27.08.10 in films 

Architect / protaganist: squint/opera

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Melbourne MSS say  

Melbourne City Council and the State overnment have a new Municipal Strategic Statement in the works. Its vision is for a Melbourne that is:

• a city for people
• a creative city
• a prosperous city
• a city of knowledge
• an eco-city
• a connected city

“The new Municipal Strategic Statement (MSS) sets out a long-term vision and strategy for the growth and development of the municipality to ensure our city is well designed and managed and continues to be a great place to live, work and visit.”

Not a lot a beef in it that I can see. It concentrates on Urban Renewal Precincts, which are in many cases in construction now, so you’d wonder what effect this MSS will have on those. Possibly it really stands for Municipal Motherhood Statement.

You can comment on the new MSS until September 3rd.

Rathdowne Street Housing Estate undergoing transformation this month into the Viva Carlton apartment complex (25% public housing). 2010

26.08.10 in urban-planning 

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Now for Now and When  

Just a reminder that the Australian exhibition (curated by John Gollings and Ivan Rijavec) at the Venice Architecture Biennale opens on Thursday. From the list of winners, it could be good. I will be keeping an eye open for images from Venice so we can pretend to be there.

ABUNDANCE 2008 (PJ)

Having attended in 2008, rather accidentally, I was impressed at the breadth and depth of the Biennale. It took two days to trek through and my head was spinning at the end – though that may have been due to the lack of reasonably priced food. And admittedly a good chunk of that time was spent fixing Antarctica’s model in the Australian pavilion – it had slumped a bit as it was shipped through the tropics – these new-fangled resins are meant for the cold countries.

HOTEL POLONIA 2008 (PJ)

My favourite country exhibit at the time was Poland’s Hotel Polonia , which gives new functions to interloping foreign-designed office blocks once the economy collapses. This year’s Polish entry looks no less interesting.

“The installation Emergency Exit by artist Agnieszka Kurant and architect Aleksandra Wasilkowska seeks to go beyond the logic of urban reality through the creation of ‘urban portable holes’: in-between spaces, places of uncertainty and doubt, of time-space discontinuity, such as abandoned or unfinished buildings, sites of catastrophe or accidents, illegal markets, rooftops and tunnels.”

24.08.10 in exhibition 

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Rem course in Russia  

Rem Koolhaas and OMA / AMO have developed the programme for the 2010 / 2011 year at the Strelka Institute , a non-profit cross-disciplinary school in Moscow. Dang, the deadline for free scholarship international registrations was August 22nd – but you could blame me for not getting around to this until now. If you happen to be reading this in Italy, you could also hot-foot it across to Venice to hear Rem and Strelka founders Alexander Mamut and Ilya Oskolkov-Tsentsiper discussing architectural education on the 26th.

Here’s this year’s programme. Love the last one.

Themes 2010 / 2011

Preservation

What do we preserve? Is there an alternative to the existing relationship between preservation and dominant ideologies that privilege certain moments in history over others? How can we deal with preservation within the context of a market economy in which architecture and cities are often reduced to marketing tools? How do we preserve urban substance without compromising its vitality and capacity to incorporate changing lifestyles? This theme takes Russia as a case study for addressing and reframing preservation within the global context of the free market.

Energy

What happens to Russia when its neighbours are no longer reliant on Russian oil and gas? How can Russia’s energy-based economy diversify? How can the country’s climatic diversity and resource richness be translated into a new approach to power? What is the role of energy in shaping the emerging global order? This theme promotes energy as a subject of design and Russia as a platform for innovation.

Thinning

How does the mobility of Russia’s population shape its urban environments? How is the decline of certain territories connected to the growth of others? When people move to cities in significant numbers, what happens to the places they leave behind? Demographic and urban change is a critical issue with which Russia has extensive experience. This theme will formulate a distinctly Russian perspective for a global conversation.
Design

What is the state of design in Russia today? Is the status of architecture changing in the age of mass media? How does money influence taste? How does ideology influence design? How will the eastward shift in economic and political power influence the look of the 21st century? This theme is a critical examination of the current state of design.

Public Space

What comprises public space in Russia: kitchens, bars, streets, squares or virtual social spaces? What should be done with the excess of open space produced by monumental Soviet planning? What can be learned from the architecture of improvisation that populated these spaces after the arrival of the market economy? Is there a correlation between the heavily-programmed nature of 21st century public space and the relative free-for-all of virtual social spaces? This theme examines the current state of shared space in Russia in its physical and virtual manifestations. It calls for a reassessment of the open spaces in Russian cities and a committed architectural engagement with the virtual territories created by the new media.

24.08.10 in call-for-submissions education

Architect / protaganist: Strelka. Institute for Media, Architecture and Design

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Related?  

Wind right back to 2002, when Zaha Hadid’s former employer, Remment Koolhaas (OMA) won the competition for the Chinese CCTV tower . Here is a scale model by his wife and OMA co-founder Madelon Vriesendorp .

Zaha’s entry for the Architecture Foundation of London’s 2005 competition picks up on the squared off Möbius form (she won):

She recycled this entry into a sculpture in 2006, sans windows and things.

Here is the final revision by Zaha Hadid for the Architecture Foundation. The Möbius has been trashed and we now have four storeys of chamfers and draped triangles. In 2008 the project fell over.

But it lives on! Here is the design for the new four storey Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland ( MOCA ), by Foreign Office Architects. Fly-through here

Similar? Funnily enough FOA were shortlisted in the Architecture Foundation competition in 2005, and Farshid Moussavi of FOA is currently a trustee of the Foundation.

Some possible precedents for this chamfering and draping.

The rotated tablecloth – makes a handy bib.

Origami.

SOURCE

SOURCE

A more likely source commonly cluttering up architects’ desks.

23.08.10 in weird-wonderful 

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Geelong notices Deakin  

Geelong Advertiser’s lead editorial today toasts the Committee for Geelong’s Vision II, which will engage with Deakin architecture students to bring about architecture with a ‘wow-factor’. The editorial states: “Geelong has been slow to utilise the grey matter of its built-environment experts.”

The Committee is keep to reinvigorate the design within its city, which is good. A posse of Deakin students told me on the weekend that Geelong is nothing but a big suburb. I ignorantly protested that it had a couple of blocks of city, “around that big carpark building.”

Anyway good luck to Deakin. As The Advertiser says, “It’s been a long time in coming but more than 30 years after Deakin University set up its school of architecture we have locals thinking of the input it might offer to Geelong’s public image.”

Not sure about that “wow-factor” imperative (or the compounding of the words). Geelong is seeking to emulate simlar wowness in Newcastle-Gateshead in the UK. Thank the big Guy upstairs they have shifted focus from Bilbao. Unfortunately, the only recent murmurs from Gateshead on my radar concern the as-we-speak demolition of the famous ’60s carpark featured so well in the original Get Carter film starring Michael Caine. I wrote half a post on that the other week then lost it – look here instead. Or click play then enlarge for best effect:

As the Channel 4 article states, this film icon is to be demolished to make way for the Gateshead Regeneration Project, a 150M GBP project to revitalise the central area. This is part of an even larger 1B GBP project for the greater Gateshead area. This is, unsurprisingly being called BIG . The Gateshead council’s changing attitudes to regeneration and the place of arts and culture within it have been instrumental in allowing the redevelopment. Architect John Devlin was for 12 years the Director of Development & Enterprise at the Gateshead Council and got the ball rolling with the “arts-led regeneration of Gateshead Quays”, a 1B GBP development. Devlin says, “We wanted to give people a reason to invest in the area.”

The Committe for Geelong is hoping to attract Mr Devlin to fix its own waterside quandry, with input from the Deakin students. Executive Director Peter Dowling says, “We need the vision first to excite people, and then investment and money will follow.”

There are inevitable echoes here of Geelong’s attempt in 2002 to snare a Guggenheim gallery, which would have displaced the architecure students from the Woolsheds. After a $3M feasibility study, Council called it a day.

Maybe this time they will think smaller – arts-led regeneration should require cheap space and a willing audience, slowly stimulating a greater interest in the area, not instant “wow-factor” buildings. But Geelong are not after artists and their poverty. As in 2002, they are after visitors and investment (the same rationale behind the Melbourne Arts Precinct spend). Hope this doesn’t lead to just as sterile an environment.

11.08.10 in urban-planning 

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Bridges over the railway  

Stumbled upon this 1979 proposal by Steven Holl to span over the Melbourne rail yards with a series of Ponte Vecchio inspired buildings-as-bridges. Kind of nice, post Federation Square, to remember the nature of the rail yards then, though half his bridges span from nowhere to nowhere in particular. The proposal is shown here together with another similar one for New York’s Highline – since made schmick by Diller, Scofio and Renfro.

01.08.10 in architects theory

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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.

Go to this year-old article for a series of maps showing what is proposed. Or the graphic at The Age .

The carpet rollers now have a licence to build from the current metro boundary all the way out to Melton/Toolern in the North West, and to Whittlesea in the North. As well as carpeting 4,000 ha of fertile market gardens in Casey.

These areas are always a bit abstract. So I have shown the actual area as a square measuring 20.7 km by 20.7 km, overlaid onto our dear city. It would extend from Melbourne’s CBD to Nunawading in the East and Mentone in the South.

That’s enough grassland for another 18 Toolerns . Odd then that Toolern will jam in 22,000 mostly low density houses (9.1 dwellings/ha.), but the new UGB areas are only expected to fit 134,000 (3.1 dwellings/ha.) I hope my maths is a bit rusty, as that’s just wrongtown. 10 dwellings per hectare is about the norm for the established area shown in the map above.

The Housing Industry Association, Urban Development Institute of Australia, and Property Council of Australia are all predictably ecstatic, though the spokesperson for the latter suggests we should have a talk about density soon. Looks like that won’t be necessary for quite a few years.

—-

Some startling news out of Monash University questions whether the compact city rhetoric of Melbourne 2030 bears much resemblance to reality. In the 2009 paper “SPATIAL PATTERNS OF URBAN COMPACTNESS IN MELBOURNE: AN URBAN MYTH OR A REALITY”, researchers have noted a “hollowing out” of inner suburbs between 2001 and 2006 – the real densification is happening in the outer ‘burbs. “A negative change in dwelling density has been noted in 55 activity centres out of a total of 104.” Most of the offending activity centres were in inner areas – Prahran is an example. Food for thought.

30.07.10 in urban-planning 

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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.

“It’s a place where there’s going to be quite a bit of celebration… [drinking]‘s one aspect of it but that’s not its role in totality.”

On the small matter of that abandoned design competition, Herald columnist John Roughan toes the line that it was reasonable to waste people’s time with a dud competition: “McCully and Lee were right to invite design ideas as soon as they had agreed on the wharf’s joint purchase last year. It was just possible an inspired idea was lurking in someone’s mind or bottom drawer.” Hmm… they would have been lucky, having briefed a booze barn next to a pensioners’ cruise terminal, on a rickety wharf half half-covered with “heritage”, and then saying it needed to be built in 18 months for a pittance. Oh right, I have one of those in my bottom drawer.

Still everyone I’ve heard has sounded mildly happy with the outcome. Maybe not Jasmax, who will now have to start all over again – the slug does not look like it wants to share the wharf with a big rectangular shed.

Thanks to the NZ Herald for the great coverage of the debate from the outset.

29.07.10 in heritage 

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Alastair Baxter fried  

Not often does an Oz architecture graduate’s blog get a help along like this. British comedian Stephen Fry has just tweeted his admiration for Alistair Baxter’s blog to his modest following of 1,632,440 people. So just who is Alexander Baxter? He describes himself as, “passionate about sports stadiums, 1950’s modernist houses, transport architecture, sustainability, German sailing boats and rugby.” And he brings it all together at his job working at Cox on sports stadiums. And he’s in the Wallabies.

Erm… my great grandfather was an All Black – Stephen??

26.07.10 in other-blogs 

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Bill Mitchell, 1944 - 2010  

Melbourne alumnus William J. Mitchell died last month after a long fight with cancer. He was 65.

Mitchell’s field of interest was broad, emcompassing (as well as architecture) the internet, education and smart cars . He ran a massive building at MIT and succeeded in commissioning buildings from Frank Gehry, Kevin Roche and Steven Holl. At the opening of the Gehry-designed Stata Center in 2004, Mitchell said,

“Leading intellectual institutions, such as MIT, carry a particular responsibility to conceive of architectural projects not just as the rational allocation of resources to achieve quantifiable management goals, but also as inventive, critical contributions to our evolving culture… Anything less is as scandalous a betrayal of their advertised principles as pedestrian scholarship or mediocre science.”

Mitchell is perhaps best known for his books about the convergence of architecture with digital networks. In 1996 he published City of Bits, a look at the then impending world of virtual communities. He saw this as an extension of architecture as we then knew it.

“For designers and planners, the task of the twenty-first century will be to build the bitsphere – a worldwide, electronically mediated environment in which networks are everywhere, and most of the artifacts that function within it (at every scale, from nano to global) have intelligence and telecommunications capabilities… Eventually [designers] will find new ways to accommodate human needs by recombining transformed fragments of traditional building types in a matrix of digital telecommunication systems and reorganized circulation and transportation patterns.

( It is interesting to read back through City of Bits now, as it now reads as a history of the last ten years, for myself at least. I expanded my practice in 2002 to include design for the web. Web design has moved on from being a mishmash of hyper-linked html pages into something far more complicated and pervasive. The processes are simlar to architecture, and I have no problem switching back and forwards between the two disciplines during a working day. One issue has been that the web industry is changing at a rate unknown in architecture, and this is reshaping the industry. In 2000 a sole web designer and builder could do everything, now there are multiple subdisciplines with scant knowledge of how the others work. Yet someone is needed to bring it all together – someone with a good understanding of all the elements, who can design spaces and plan and detail, who can bridge between clients and builders, someone who can see the wood for the trees. This person is increasingly being called a web architect. The tentacles of the web are entwining more and more with traditional architecture, so the next five years are going to be interesting. Maybe that’s fodder for another post. )

CITY OF BITS
M.I.T. OBIT
MELBOURNE SCHOL OF DESIGN OBIT
Tip: AP

22.07.10 in computing 

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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:

Overseas projects by Australian practices
What international locations are Australian practices building in?
Send brief project details including project location, project name, date, architectural practice(s) responsible, and contact name (not for publication).

The Australian architectural diaspora
Who are the Australian architects working/living abroad? Where are they and what do they do?
Briefly outline who you are, what you do and where you live. (If you prefer to remain anonymous in the list and associated magazine graphic please indicate this when you reply.) This can include Australians with architectural backgrounds who are working outside traditional architectural practice.

Each list will be used to compile a graphic spread in the magazine, showing the diversity of Australian engagement internationally. If you would like to be included in this please email AA with the above details.

The deadline for this information is July 7th.

06.07.10 in call-for-submissions magazines

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Shed ache  

The architects-vs-the rest battle to keep the Queen’s Wharf sheds is getting hotter on the pages of the New Zealand Herald.

Background: A half-baked rushed competition was held late last year for the quick construction of a cruise ship terminal and “Party Central” for the 2011 Rugby World Cup. Competitors were informed by the brief that the 98 year old sheds had a significant industrial heritage status, being the last of their sort on the waterfront. Many entrants incorporated one or both of them into their designs. The competition was scuttled soon after a winner was chosen, the mayor saying at the time that at least they hadn’t had to spend much on architects.

The local council and regional council, who ran the competition, now support a scheme to demolish both sheds and erect a temporary Party central tent structure.

Architects have come out against this, the general sway being that the sheds are worthy of protection and shouldn’t be demolished without at least a long term plan for the wharf and its surrounds. Architect David Mitchell is leading a group of 21 prominent architects protesting. He says:

“There are noble structures beneath the battered tin sheathing of these sheds, and we now strongly urge Aucklanders to resist the current proposal to bowl them over and replace them with a new building.”

AUT history professor Paul Moon has replied in the Herald that given the track record of architects in Auckland, especially in the ’80s, they shouldn’t be entitled to be the “self-appointed arbiters of public taste” in this debate. For him, the sheds have no aesthetic appeal.

“The fact is that the sheds on the Wharf were designed purely for functional reasons, in an age where aesthetic appeal in industrial buildings was considered even less important than it is now.”

Memories of the Eighties cloud the argument. Architects were complicit in the development frenzy that saw many loved 19th Century watering holes, laneways, thheatres and arcades demolished. When Black Monday stopped developmers in their tracks, Aucklanders adjusted to the pockmarked city of barren at-grade car parks and corporate towers left in their wake. Some, like Moon, haven’t forgiven architects for their part in this – though many of the firms involved were Australian. Some architects, myself included, wonder what it is about Auckland that drives this continuing urge to demolish without considered and coordinated plans for the future.

EARLIER NEWS POSTS THE WHARF…
TVNZ PROGRAMME

04.07.10 in heritage 

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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?

As the ABC TV News pointed out (there is no link), the northern edge is a booming area for new suburbs. The suburban carpet continues to roll out as if it was 1968.

Growth Areas Authority – Melton North

04.07.10 in urban-planning 

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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.

The convention centre was built as part of a bloated PPP development made profitable by containing a large Direct Factory Outlet. Perhaps they should have had to enter them together. If it all seems a bit familiar, you’re remembering Southern Cross Station. Is PPP now code for building an unprofitable and pricey building joined at the hip to a highly profitable DFO big box?

That’s probably a bit mean to the fine building that won. But it did come within a dodgy package that supported its level of refinement, and that surely can’t be ignored…?

Other winners are Wood Marsh (Port Phillip Winery, Eastlink Freeway) and Lyons (LyonsHouseMuseum). McBride Charles Ryan deservedly won for their stunning Fitzroy High School. And Hassell won for that monster of a building at Docklands – the ANZ. Not too loveable on the outside – it looks like it fell out of Potsdamer Platz – but apparently inside it is a wonder.

It was also a night for lesser known small practices. Breathe Architecture , Multiplicity , March Studio , Andrew Maynard , and Justin Mallia all won awards – sometimes two.

MC Virginia Trioli seems to enjoy telling people off. She had a go at architects collecting awards – why did architects saunter up to collect them while in other industries people practically ran? But her biggest salvo was aimed at the Architecture and Design website, who published the embargoed media release about six hours before the awards. Apparently they didn’t attend. The article has been removed.

Pics soon.

[ Seem to be back blogging, was unavoidably detained for a while there ]

25.06.10 in awards 

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$152M on trucks and lifts  

NSW Premier Kristina Keneally yesterday announced that new tunnels for trucks would be constructed under the Sydney Opera House forecourt, and new lifts to service them. The aim is to prevent further tangles between tourists and heavy traffic in front of the building – there is an incident once every five days on average.

“The work that we are announcing today … will remove those heavy vehicles from the forecourt, it will make this building what [architect Jorn Utzon] imaged [sic] that it would be.” ( ABC )

That’s wishful thinking. The renovations required to complete Utzon’s interior designs are currently estimated at $800M. The opera house doesn’t expect this any time soon, and is just trying to get its hand on $50M to update ageing stage machinery.

Nevermind, the punters are more interested in the food:

07.06.10 in buildings 

Architect / protaganist: Sydney Opera House

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Auckland's waterside standoff  

It’s been a mess from the start. Last year hundreds of designers provided proposals for Queen Street Wharf based on a half-baked design brief provided at the last minute. The brief underlined the importance of keeping at least one of the two 98 year old sheds.

A winner was chosen and then then the process was cancelled. The cruise ship terminal was removed from the scheme. All that was required was a tent that will act as “Party Central” for the Rugby World Cup 2011. Now, a few months later, the Auckland Regional Council is proposing to demolish both sheds and put up a temporary structure , designed by Jasmax. The Auckland City Council came up with an alternative proposal in April that reused both industrial sheds. But it doesn’t seem to have the power here. So Auckland will lose its last two wharf sheds and gain a $9M temporary shed. This is a decision that doesn’t take into account the long term future of the waterfront, made because the ARC didn’t want to be “severely embarrassed”.

The Auckland Architecture Association has joined the Historic Places Trust in condemning the plans, calling for the process to be halted. AAA spokesperson Adam Mercer said , “to wastefully demolish the last of Auckland’s working waterfront heritage before the Super City is formed and a comprehensive masterplan for the waterfront can be developed is premature, foolish and wasteful”. That Super City he is talking about is the plan to amalgamate Auckland Councils into one, and abolish the ARC. This is becoming a political battle between two bodies that soon won’t exist.

Whichever way it goes, the architectural fratenity has been badly bruised by the process. Untold hours have been wasted by architects from around the world on an incompetently handled competition. To rub salt into the wounds, late last year Auckland Mayor John Banks said, “I have not yet jumped to a conclusion that the whole show has been a waste of time, because at the very least, at not very great cost, we have got people thinking of this.” Not at great cost to the city perhaps – but costing the many participating architectural firms a good lot.

Last week Tim Greer, of Sydney practice Tokin Zulaikha Greer, published his opinion in the NZ Herald.

In the end, no project eventuated, no thanks were given, only a bit of crowing from politicians about how little the whole fiasco had cost them.

Auckland does not need a Rugby World Cup “Party Central” on the wharf, if the consequence of it is a wharf full of nothing. This is a short term solution for a pivotal site made by a government body that won’t exist after November 1st.

07.06.10 in heritage 

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