Jack O’Brien’s Film – just released
Jack O’Brien’s Film – just released
An architectural review of the film festival
I missed the Architecture and Design Film Festival this year ‘cause I was doing some architectural photography of a different variety.
So I eagerly sniffed out any architectural offerings in this year’s New Zealand International Film Festival.
Life is too short to watch self-indulgent and depressing drama, so my programme was biased towards interesting and (hopefully) uplifting documentaries in which architecture was either explicit or inferred. Read More
Five Franks and a Phillip
I recently returned from mini sabbatical to the big USA. Naturally pilgrimages to iconic architectural houses were in order.
I visited three Frank Lloyd Wrights and a Phillip Johnson, each open to the public and with highly informative guided tours.
Top of the list was Wright’s iconic Fallingwater – well worth the four plus hour drive from Washington to its Pennsylvania location.
It’s promoted as ‘Architecture as Experience’ and since it opened to the public 20 years ago, more than 3 million visitors have availed themselves of this experience. A fitting tribute to one of the world’s most famous houses – its aesthetic audacity and structural innovation takes your breath away.
Hopefully Wright is now gamboling happily somewhere far above his masterpiece with some of natures nymphs. Read More
URBAN ANZAC
A few years ago I attended an architectural conference in Melbourne.
Students from the University of Melbourne School of Architecture conducted a guided tour by bus of their cities newest marvels.
The Ashton Raggatt McDougall designed Shrine of Remembrance Visitor Centre, completed in 2006, was on their programme. It is a new insertion sitting below the Shrine on the city side.
Back on the bus, a refined English architect I had been sitting next to asked, ‘why do you Australasian’s spend so much money keeping alive the memories of wars held so many years ago?’
To which I replied, ‘well you English called upon many thousands of us colonials to be cannon fodder in far-away wars that were none of our business.’
He took such umbrage that he got up and moved to the back of the bus.
Island Time
My memories of Waiheke island was that at the end of a ferry ride, I arrived at an escape from Auckland suburbia into a rumpled and lushly covered landscape dotted with kiwi baches. A paradise for alternative Aucklanders wanting to escape the city.
Now it has been discovered by the wealthy.
Its holiday character has changed fundamentally because its desirability has led to great pressure on its limited land area. It is now effectively an elite suburb, possibly now able to be described as Auckland’s ‘East Shore’
The day after the recent NZIA conference main course, a tasty desert option was arranged – a visit to four new Waiheke houses.
Leaving the Auckland terminal, our ferry passed the berthed Russian Vodka Oligarch’s floating palace ‘Serene’. Maybe it was a design precursor of the land-based palaces we were about to see. Upon arrival at Waiheke, we were bussed to a magnificent headland perch upon which a recently completed Stevens Lawson designed house for part-time occupants is anchored.
Both the floating and land based structures were slickly designed. Interestingly both the boat and the house featured flush fitting panels, but where Serene’s concealed jet skis, a submarine, fizz boats and even a helicopter, the headland house’s conceals merely a fridge, a cutlery drawer and a microwave.
