So here it is. What a lot of self-loathing New Zealanders have been waiting on for so long, the chance for Auckland — New Zealand's biggest city, with its forgiving climate, majestic harbours and sandy beaches — to atone for decades of short-sighted urban forecasting and tasteless design. A chance to finally be one of the hip cities.
Ladies and gentlemen, your Auckland Unitary Plan.
The plan is ...
2012 was some year for Lance and Nicky Herbst. After securing Home NZ's Home of the Year, the couple's Parnell practice has now been acknowledged internationally, narrowly missing out on the WAN House of the Year Award to Sforza Seilern Architects’ Gota Residence in East Africa.
From World Architecture News:
Admired for its ‘modest yet spectacular’ nature Herbst Architects’ scheme was close to wi...
In August eboss hosted gala screenings for How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr. Foster?, a documentary on esteemed British architect Norman Foster.Partnering with sponsors from the building industry, the gala events were a huge success, with invited architects and designers rubbing shoulders in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.Check out photos from the Christchurch event below and let us kn...
In the latest Auckland Conversations lecture, speakers from Australia's HEAT initiative will talk about their success in raising the international profile of Queensland architects and how a similar initiative might work for Auckland.Via the Auckland Architecture Association:Design in the Landscape is proposed as a New Zealand wide business initiative, championed by Auckland Council, to raise the i...
[/caption]In a world of superlative architecture, here's a new one: the narrowest liveable domicile.Keret House, a spheroidal sliver of retro futurism, is to be built in a tiny space between two buildings in Cracow, Poland. Israeli writer Etgar Keret will be using it as his l...
In his July article "Frank Gehry and the Lost Vision for Te Papa", Werewolf Editor Gordon Campbell laments the-national-museum-that-could-have-been: an Ian Athfield / Frank Gehry Te Papa design which never made the selection committee's shortlist.
According to Campbell, passing over the deconstructivist Gehry (before he became an international "starchitect") not only leaves New Zealand with the un...
Aucklanders read on: EBOSS is hosting the New Zealand gala premiere of How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr. Foster? and has 10 tickets to give away to the exclusive event!Simply like EBOSS on Facebook and you go into the draw. We'll draw the winners on Friday evening (July 15th).The gala premiere takes place 5.30pm Tuesday July 19th at the Rialto Cinema in Newmarket and includes pre-film drinks...
Via TED:With his team at SENSEable City Lab, MIT's Carlo Ratti makes cool things by sensing the data we create. He pulls from passive data sets -- like the calls we make, the garbage we throw away -- to create surprising visualizations of city life. And he and his team create dazzling interactive environments from moving water and flying light, powered by simple gestures caught through sensors.Car...
Last month the Department of Building and Housing reported that it received 226 submissions to its Request for Proposal for Stage 2 Temporary Housing.Three providers were ultimately chosen to take care of the first 300 lightweight and low-cost portable dwellings in time for winter. They are a consortium of Hawkins/Spanbild/Fulton Hogan, Jennian Homes and New Zealand Transportable Units.Jennian...
Japan is asking for help to meet a shortfall on a 72,000-unit emergency housing scheme for survivors who lost their homes in the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.Via Construction Manager:The government will buy the dwellings on commercial terms with an indicative price of around £37,000 per unit.Suppliers will have to enter into a partnership with a Japanese firm in order to qualify for the work and m...
The 2011 New Zealand Architecture Award recipients were announced last week by the NZIA.It's a respectable field of projects spanning 10 categories. The jury of architects Hugh Tennent (Wellington), Marshall Cook and Daniel Marshall (Auckland) and Camilla Block (Sydney) will select an overall winner on 20 May.Here's a selection of my favourites. What do you like?Earlier this year, a new record was set when virtual property, the kind that only exists in online gaming software, sold for about $6 million. That was the case of Planet Calypso from the Entro...
