Rog on Beauty
IN SITU CONFERENCE 2015
Just as my cellphone needs regular recharging, my creative juices need replenishing. Every two years our Institute arranges presentations for us, from an array of local and international architects. They inspire, entertain, agitate and impassion us. Between the 10th and 13th of February last, this event happened at the Viaduct Events Centre in Auckland […]
ATH 1940-2015
Ath was adopted. His birth parents were 17 years old, so maybe that it why his mind remained perpetually young and inquiring. In November last year, a few of us architects of a certain age had our regular lunch in Wellington. At 12.30 Ath said he had to leave, in order to catch a flight […]
STAR GAZING
The children arranged a very clever and special gift to celebrate my turning 70. This followed on from their 65th birthday prezzie to me, which was a dinosaur shark tooth to which was attached a plaque reading ’65 million years young’. An anti ageing theme has been established.
LAND LOCKED
I feel driven to join the hullabaloo surrounding affordable housing. Design and construction are separate considerations beyond the scope of this blog. In many minds, including my own, housing costs relate fundamentally to the supply of land upon which to place those houses. Land at present represents more than a 1/3rd of the cost of […]
Hero House
While the Bay of Plenty recently I got the opportunity to indulge my interest in sustainable design with a visit Te Uru Taumatua, the new Tuhoe headquarters in Taneatua. I was fortunate in that both Tamati Kruger the chair of the Tuhoe Trust, and Kirsten Luke, its CEO, were on hand. They gave me an […]
Light Architecture
The most successful event in this year’s Wellington Festival of the Arts , was the ‘Powerplant’ lighting display held in the botanical gardens. This demonstrates that the primary human sense is the visual. Building on the public appeal of artificial lighting displays, a recent public lighting festival called ‘Lux Wellington Night Lights’ turned Wellington’s waterfront […]
Icon Envy
A recent survey commissioned by UK Building/Architecture website InBuilding.org was recently profiled in The Architects Journal under the headline, ‘It’s true: people don’t know what architects do.’ People visiting The Guggenheim in Bilbao or the Shard in London are given a bit of a clue as to what architects do. Having recently returned from a […]
Heritage Houses in the Hutt
I took a short break this week in the middle of some design deadlines to visit to a John Scott 1970s’ gem, still owned by the friends of John who commissioned it. (Thanks to Lower Hutt architect Bruce Sedcole for organising the visit). I’m both a professional and personal fan of John and his work, […]
A joyful meeting
The 1970s were a frantic period of architectural activity for us. One of the many houses in this period was for some very nice people called the Hamiltons in 1978. I visited the site somewhere in North Canterbury just once, before I had even put pen to paper. It was a featureless flat paddock some […]
Weather or not
It’s been rough around the planet in recent times. Hell hasn’t frozen over, but recently the Niagara Falls did. England has been subject to flooding of almost biblical proportions. Parts of Christchurch have been hit by tornados and the Australian states of Victoria and New South Wales regularly catch fire. Car production was recently halted […]
