WellUrban
Personal reflections on urbanism, urban life and sustainable urban design in Wellington, New Zealand.
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WellUrban newsitems
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Courtenay Park at last
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- After much controversy and delay, work on Courtenay Place Park is finally underway. There have been a few changes since the earlier plans, including the addition of lightboxes (to display artwork) along the northern side, and the omission for now of any extension to the old toilet block since Ferg pulled out of the wine bar concept.
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Building rumours 21: end-of-year round-up
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- Here's an assortment of new building news to wrap up 2007, starting from the confirmed and moving towards the more speculative.The apartment building at 158 Cuba St, which one would expect to be approaching construction since the previous building was demolished a little while ago, now has a name and a shiny website: Cubana.
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Cuba Street, Te Aro, Wellington, Wellington City, Wellington, 6011, New Zealand (OpenStreetMap)
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The fun police
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- "Graffiti Alley" between the Left Bank and Ghuznee St may have just been edged out in the Wellingtonista Best Public Art awards, but it's still the most dynamic and democratic site of all. There were some particularly interesting goings-on a couple of weekends ago, and when I walked past early one the evening the masked artists were hard at work; later that evening they were still there, but being sternly spoken to by the boys in blue.
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Cuba Street, Te Aro, Wellington, Wellington City, Wellington, 6011, New Zealand (OpenStreetMap)
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Bowen Integrated Ruckus
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- There's been a lot of publicity, most of it negative, about the planned "Bowen Integrated Campus". There hasn't been much to go on, apart from this one rendering, but even so it seems hard to reconcile some of the statements about it with the plans.
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Tunnel vision
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- The long-delayed Ngauranga to Airport Transport Study has finally come back with some options for public consultation. It'll take a while for me to crunch through the many megabytes of reports, brochures and forms, but for the meantime I'll just point you to the Dominion Post's barely restrained glee at the prospect of more roads and tunnels, and frogblog's reasonably measured response.
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Density done right: The Altair
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- It's been a while since I've written a post in this occasional series, but that's partly because there are depressingly few good recent examples to choose from. I've been looking for exemplary inner-suburban infill developments, and while this one is stretching the definition a bit, other infill developers could learn a lot from it.The Altair townhouse development in Newtown's Rintoul St is, at three storeys, what I would call a low-rise medium-density development.
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Newtown, Wellington, Wellington City, Wellington, New Zealand (OpenStreetMap)
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Back to the Promenade
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- After being closed for reconstruction for most of the year, the Tug Wharf Promenade at Kumutoto reopened this morning. Apart from new lighting and seats, the main feature is a new bridge, supported by a "Cradle" at one end and a "Crane Tower" at the other.
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Visible and risible
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- There was a shock horror scoop in the Dominion Post today, with the headline Wind farm 'visible from Island Bay to Waikanae'. A leaked report purports to show that the proposed Puketiro wind farm would be visible from all across the Wellington region, and a spokesperson for a group called "Preserve Pauatahanui" said that "the leaked information shows that all Wellingtonians should be concerned".Does this mean that the wind farm will be a dominating presence across the region? Hardly.
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Growing a spine
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- I've mentioned the "urban spine" concept many times before, and the expectation that much of Wellington's population growth will occur along a relatively compact corridor extending from Johnsonville via the CBD and hospital to the airport. The consultation and planning process has already started for Johnsonville, and now attention is moving to the southern parts of the city with the "Adelaide Rd - Planning for the Future" process.
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Newtown, Wellington, Wellington City, Wellington, New Zealand (OpenStreetMap)
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Awarding
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- File under: events, awards, Wellingtonista, architecture, WellingtonIt's that time of year again: time for the Wellingtonista awards. The very organised and energetic Wellingtonista people (and me) have put out the call for your votes on the best (and occasionally worst) in Wellington in many vital categories, such as Best Coffee Beans, Hottest Hospo and Supervillain of the Year. WellUrban readers may be most interested in categories such as Best Building, Best Public Space and Best Public Art, but I'm sure that awards such as Best Apparel Store and (of course) Best Drink will also grab your attention.Voting will run from Monday the 19th until December the 4th, followed by a stupendous awards party on December the 6th.
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Building rumours 20: The Victoria Quarter
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- There hasn't been much publicity about this, but it could be one of the biggest developments, residential or otherwise, to hit Wellington in a long time.It's called the "Victoria Quarter", and it's planned to take up all of the large vacant site that currently hosts the Sunday market, bordered by Victoria, Vivian and Willis streets.
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Waterfront fatigue
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- No doubt many of you have had your fill of waterfront posts, but there was a slew of ill-informed letters to the editor in today's Dominion Post that I felt compelled to reply to. There are too many specific errors and misinterpretations to fit into in a 200-word rant, and I thought I'd try to tone down some of my usual vitriol, so I tried to offer a constructive discussion of why good public space design is more subtle and complex than just leaving as much empty space as possible.
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Last chance feedback
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- Feedback on the Frank Kitts Park and Kumutoto schemes closes today, so if you haven't done so, today's your last chance to pop down to the Waterfront Project Information Centre and give your feedback.
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Kumutoto Option C
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- Option C consists of one continuous structure, the one that in earlier posts became known as "the conniptions building".
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Kumutoto Option A
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- Public feedback closes on both the Frank Kitts Park redesign and Kumutoto sites 8-10 scheme this Friday, so I've got a lot to get through by then. After discussing all the Frank Kitts options, let's move on to the first of the six Kumutoto entries.
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Voting space
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- You have until 5pm tomorrow to vote for your favourite public space in the With My Little Eye exhibition: either online or at the exhibition itself.
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Wharf Plaza
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- The public spaces at Kumutoto are gradually being reopened after their revamp. This week the area between the Steamship Wharf and Meridian Energy buildings, which according to Wellington Waterfront Ltd is to be called "Wharf Plaza", is having the last finishing touches applied. While the "spring" weather may not exactly be conducive to lingering outside, the green lights under the new benches look especially good at dusk.
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All at sea
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- I'm disappointed by the outcome of the Environment Court decision that rejected the Marine Education Centre at Te Raekaihau Point. I've never been a hard-core supporter of the project, but I was convinced that for the particular vision the proponents had in mind, there was no better site.
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Zealandia, Lake Road, Highbury, Wellington, Wellington Region, 6011, New Zealand (OpenStreetMap)
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How is the air up there?
- WellUrban
- Urban turbines seem to be catching on. This vertical-axis turbine has recently popped up atop the "i-Centre" at 50 Manners St, there's a smaller one on top of the already environmentally-advanced Conservation House down the road, and the Vector Energy trial turbine that I wrote about in June will be installed on The Terrace.
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Lebensraum
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- I've had a go at the Q on Taranaki proposals several times before, and while the version currently being submitted for resource consent has been cut back from the original design (I won't call it architecture), it's still a dreadful piece of crap.
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Urban September
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- It's a big month for those interested in the urban environment.
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Pass mark for the park
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- Among the various items on the agenda of the recent Waterfront Development Subcommittee meeting was a review of Waitangi Park. There are five separate PDFs to download there, including a survey of park users and an interesting quantitative study of which sections of the park were being used and when, but the guts of the report is a large tabular Design Quality Audit.
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The lost commandment
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- If Moses had lived in Willis St, he might have resorted to this as well: Not quite as rude as some of the informal "no parking" signs around, but rather direct nonetheless.
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Building rumours 17: towers of the imagination
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- Regular readers will know that we haven't exactly been kind to ArcHaus around here, but here's a surprising find: a project on their website that exhibits more than a little grace, drama, complexity and invention.
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Film and architecture
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- Apologies for the late notice (I've only just found out myself), but the 2007 Jasmax Architectural Film Festival starts today. Here's a quick summary of the programme (all films are at the Penthouse cinema).
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Good sports
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- There's a Waterfront Development Subcommittee meeting on tomorrow night, and for once, I'm not going to put myself through all that pain. While there's no single development up for specific debate, this time, feedback is due on the entire draft Waterfront Development Plan, so all the interested parties are having their say.Of the 633 written submissions, 604 were about the future of indoor sport given the changes to Sheds 1 and 6; and in particular, most of these called for the ground floor of Site 10 to become the new indoors sports venue, along the lines of what I've also been suggesting.
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ASB Sports Centre, Kemp Street, Kilbirnie, Wellington, Wellington Region, 6022, New Zealand (OpenStreetMap)
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Mt Cook summit
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- Mt Cook has been facing a few changes recently, and the locals have been vocal in their response. The next step is a well-publicised public meeting tomorrow night, and it will be interesting to see what comes out of that.Quite apart from specific issues of supermarkets, swimming pools and traffic, I get the feeling that Mt Cook has long faced a more fundamental question: one of identity.
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Mount Cook, Wellington, Wellington City, Wellington, 6021, New Zealand (OpenStreetMap)
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Kumutoto green
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- Here's the first signs of the revamped public space at Kumutoto nearing completion: pohutukawa and grasses being planted along the western side of the Steamship Wharf building.
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Jafa wars
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- Last month, media person, sometime blogger and reluctant man-about-town Damien Christie wrote an article for Metro about everything that's wrong with Wellington. I know that's old news by now, but I've deliberately taken a while to respond here, partly because it was hard to tell how much of it was consciously "shallow Jafa" self-parody and how much was real.
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A sporting site
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- Submissions on the Draft Waterfront Development Plan close on Friday, and while my opinion on most of it is just "get on with it", there's one area where I'll be promoting a specific change. While the ground floors of Sites 8, 9 and 10 have been designated simply as "retail", I think that Site 10 should be explicitly set aside as an indoor sports facility to replace Sheds 1 and 6.
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ASB Sports Centre, Kemp Street, Kilbirnie, Wellington, Wellington Region, 6022, New Zealand (OpenStreetMap)
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