Author: Tom

The Princess and the Sausage

Most “pop-up shops” emerge in vacant retail spaces, but The Prin­cess’ Bed­room was dif­fer­ent: the shop itself popped up, in the form of a brightly-painted cara­van in a grav­elly old Ghuznee St car­park. Now it has com­pany, in the form of a “Saus­age Sizzle” cara­van in the adja­cent park­ing space, serving an odd com­bin­a­tion of Kiwiana saus­age sarnies, tem­pura veget­ables and hearty soups & stews.

Neither this cara­van nor its girli­er neigh­bour fit in with the emer­ging high­brow design­er vibe across the street (Milk Crate, Quilters, Cus­toms and Bowen Gal­ler­ies), but it sure beats a puddle-rid­den car­park. Per­haps we’ll see more of this cara­van urb­an­ism set­ting up tem­por­ary shop in vacant spaces until we crawl our way out of the reces­sion, and it looks like a cheap and flex­ible way for small busi­nesses to get up & run­ning in the gaps and fringes of the city.

An Eighties Eye

We’re indebted to the Archi­tec­tur­al Centre for point­ing out this fas­cin­at­ing archi­tec­tur­al time cap­sule at NZ On Screen. Dav­id Mitchell (the archi­tect, not the poet, nov­el­ist or comedi­an) talks us through the debat­able delights of Wel­ling­ton’s 1984 streets in this epis­ode of his series The Eleg­ant Shed.

Mar­vel at the spark­ling mir­ror-glass towers! Admire Ian Ath­field’s funk­tast­ic interi­ors and dash­ing scarf! Won­der at Roger Walker­’s round win­dows and even round­er bouffant! Delight in the crisp dar­ing lines of Mas­sey House and Futuna Chapel! Be astoun­ded by the “urban­ity and drive” of mid-Eighties Wel­ling­ton, when even the Oaks Arcade looked fresh and enti­cing!

Out, damned spot!

Des­pite my frivol­ous title, it seems that most people loved the Kusama install­a­tion “Dots for Love and Peace”, and are sad to see it removed, dot by col­our­ful dot, from the front of the City Gal­lery today.

The Gal­lery have been help­fully answer­ing ques­tions on Twit­ter, and unfor­tu­nately for souven­ir hunters that includes the news that the dots will be “very care­fully dis­posed of”. On the plus side, the Hotere/Culbert install­a­tion Fault will be soon be mak­ing a glow­ing return.

Treespotting

I’m more likely to write about night­life than wild­life, but I do like urb­an obser­va­tions in gen­er­al, so Pro­ject Noah caught my eye. It’s a web­site and shiny new free iPhone app that lets people track, record and find out about the spe­cies in their envir­on­ment.

Not sur­pris­ingly, I’ve mostly recor­ded very urb­an spe­cies (that’s not quite what Baudelaire meant by “the bot­an­ist of the pave­ment”), but it could be very use­ful for map­ping rare plants, spiders, invas­ive spe­cies or even neigh­bour­hood cats, if you were so inclined. It’s all pretty new in this neck of the woods, so there’s only my lightly-informed spot­tings of scrappy road­side cab­bage trees and frightened little pen­guins to look at, but if more Wel­ling­to­ni­ans get involved it could become a really use­ful guide to loc­al flora and fauna.

Modernista

There’s a lot on at the moment for fans of Mod­ern archi­tec­ture. The Long Live the Mod­ern exhib­i­tion is at the New Dowse until the 4th of April, includ­ing two bus tours this week­end.

Sunday’s tour will fea­ture Bill Toomath talk­ing about his design for the Teach­ers’ Col­lege in Karori. Wel­ling­ton City Gal­lery’s exhib­i­tion on Toomath’s work, Lib­er­at­ing Every­day Life, fin­ishes this Sunday. Eye of the Fish hosts two lively dis­cus­sions on his water­front plans and study, show­ing that Toomath’s con­tri­bu­tion to Wel­ling­ton archi­tec­ture and archi­tec­tur­al debate is still strong.

If you’re more inter­ested in what the build­ings of tomor­row might look like, have a look at React­ive Archi­tec­ture at Te Papa. Some of the giant inhab­ited sails, human-powered slot­cars and polyp-like motion-sens­it­ive façades may seem fanci­ful, but it’s a much more inspir­ing approach to mater­i­als and design than just choos­ing which Har­die product to use.

Nice day for a (protest) picnic

If you haven’t heard already, the Big Tune-in Sit-in is on today from 1–2pm on Par­lia­ment lawn. Bring your port­able radio and a pic­nic lunch to cel­eb­rate Radio New Zea­l­and and its import­ance to New Zeal­and’s cul­tur­al life. As Sue says over on her Craft2.0 blog:

yup it’s a protest pic­nic, which really is an incred­ibly classy and spe­cial way of say­ing how much you love our nation­al broad­caster.

I for one welcome our new mirrorball overlords

Te Papa’s fore­court may look as if it’s under attack by giant glit­tery space balls, but it’s actu­ally the start of a two-year kin­et­ic sculp­ture install­a­tion called “The Mimet­ic Broth­er­hood”, by Peter Trev­ely­an.

There’s not much kin­es­is evid­ent at the moment, but once the install­a­tion is com­plete, expect the plinth-eat­ing mon­sters to start pulsat­ing in their full hydraul­ic glory.

Humanising the City

Among the open­ing exhib­i­tions at the brand spank­ing new City Gal­lery is Regan Gentry’s install­a­tion Make Way. Along with much of Gentry’s work, it pro­vokes ques­tions about the con­tem­por­ary city, and in this spir­it the Gal­lery is host­ing a pan­el dis­cus­sion on “Human­ising the City”. It’s on Wed­nes­day 4 Novem­ber at 12.30pm (which is one of the Gal­lery’s pop­u­lar free Wed­nes­days) in the Adam Aud­it­or­i­um.

I will chair the dis­cus­sion, which will be around ques­tions such as “How do plan­ning and urb­an design in Wel­ling­ton respond to human needs? What is the role of urb­an design in mak­ing our cit­ies live­able, lively, and com­munity-focused places? How do we cre­ate pub­lic space which bal­ances envir­on­ment­al sus­tain­ab­il­ity with infra­struc­ture sens­it­ive to the needs of its inhab­it­ants?” The oth­er par­ti­cipants are Asso­ci­ate Pro­fess­or Penny Allan (Pro­gramme Dir­ect­or, Land­scape Archi­tec­ture, Fac­ulty of Archi­tec­ture & Design, Vic­tor­ia Uni­ver­sity of Wel­ling­ton), Pro­fess­or Phil­ippa Howden-Chap­man (Dir­ect­or, NZ Centre for Sus­tain­able Cit­ies), Philip Belesky (Wel­ling­ton freel­ance design­er, Eye of the Fish blog­ger), and Mike Mel­lor (Vice Pres­id­ent, Liv­ing Streets Aotearoa).

Off the Hook

While the Hook of Maui has been scrapped due to cost over­runs and prob­lems with the frickin’ laser, the Wel­ling­ton City Coun­cil is still keen on the idea of a gate­way sculp­ture, and indeed the com­pet­i­tion will be re-run later his year. The pro­pos­al had some mixed responses, but now there’s a chance for a rethink.

So, what do you think? What (if any­thing) would make a suit­able mark­er for the north­ern entrance to Wel­ling­ton?