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15.11.02
The U.S. Pentagon Memorial competition selected six
finalists late last month and one was a submission from Jacky Bowring,
a Lincoln University Landscape Architecture lecturer, and Room 4.1.3,
who designed the landscape at the Australian National Museum in
Canberra.
"Our concept is based on the symbol of the 'black box flight
recorder' and our preliminary design is for there to be 184 'black
boxes' - one for each of the victims - in the form of illuminated
wells of water. The names of the individual victims will be reflected
upwards through the water from submerged mirrors. The boxes will
be coloured orange because that is in fact the colour of aircraft
'black' boxes.
"Being reflected through the water
the names will have the appearance of floating in space and surrounded
by sky," says Dr Bowring.
Since the win, Dr Bowring has travelled to Washington DC with the
other finalists to meet with victims' families. The finalists have
each been given $US20,000 to develop their designs.
Pentagon
Memorial
Bowring
/ room 4.1.3 entry
room 4.1.3
jacky
bowring
15.11.02
New Zealand architecture firm JASMAX have just won
(well they were eleventh equal) the AIA Business Week/Architectural
Record Awards. These American awards take into account the impact
the building's design has had on improving the business performance
of its client.
AIA
awards page
JASMAX
C-Drive page
20.10.02
The ABC is repeating on Tuesday a George Munster lecture
about the recent reporting of booms and imminent busts in the media.
"Are some newspapers acting as pimps for the real estate industry?"
says Hugo Kelly of Crikey.com. Three speakers examine the conflicts
of interests involved when the mainstream news reports on property.
It is put forward that there is almost no coverage of renters even
though they represent about 30% of the population, and that lifestyle
shows are nothing but home ownership propaganda.
The lecture is also available on line from here
14.10.02
The New Zealand Herald exposé
into leaky buildings has grown into a national scandal. The Herald
is publishing frightening new facts daily and is encouraging damp
homeowners to email their horror stories in.
Just about everyone who could be blamed has been blamed:
- the builder
- the tender process
- the Building Industry Authority
- the building certifiers
- the "impractical" architects
- the owners
- the 1991 performance-based Building Code
- the timber
- the climate
- mediterrainean styles, and so on.
Populated parts of New Zealand tend to suffer excessively from either
wind, rain, humidity or earthquakes. These natural traits haven't
aided a recent trend to face-sealed, texture-coated housing with
parapet walls.
Most builders and architects have been aware of problems since about
1994, when texture coatings made the news. Wet framing and settlement
were causing the fibre cement boards behind the plaster to shift,
compromising seals and causing hairline cracks. The problem may
have worsened a few years later when regulations allowed the use
of untreated timber framing (though this is disputed
by timber suppliers). Other trends in building practices in New
Zealand have been towards hermetically sealed air-conditioned homes
and thinner framing. All these paths lead to wet framing and trapped
condensation.
Now the media is looking for a scapegoat. While everyone has come
off badly, it looks as if the blame is focussed on the building
code - it will probably be made less flexible and more prescriptive.
This is unfortunately a bit late for the tens of thousands of affected
homeowners who will soon face costly remedial works and a drop in
their house prices.
Architects in New Zealand have been fairly silent on the matter,
taking it on the chin when the Herald takes a swipe at them. The
NZ Institute of Architects website
makes no mention of the crisis, and does not appear to have released
a statement to the press. This is unfortunate as it was the Unitec
School of Architecture's 'Auckland
wall cladding survey' in late 2000 that set the ball rolling.
Newspaper comment since this date has been anecdotal and speculative
(as Chris Murphy of Unitec pointed out, the survey was a survey,
it was not research, no conclusions were made).
The NZ leaky building crisis bears uncanny
resemblance to British Columbia's own leaky
condo crisis, which has kept the Vancouver press busy for the
last 5 years. The upshot there was that the building code got most
of the blame, as it's broad performance-based solutions did not
sufficiently scare developers looking for a quick buck. Architects
felt the fallout too, and now can't
obtain insurance against leaks from one of the larger PI insurers.
BRANZ
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