Tag: opinion | Architecture Now

Opinion: Ecstasy and equity

Practice | Karamia Müller notes: “Architecture does touch everybody. This is its ecstasy. And it is this quality that makes the debates underpinning the profession, the practices and the community of practitioners so compelling and critical.”

Opinion: On confusion

Practice | Pip Cheshire writes about the critical place anticipation and agency have in our trade. “We spend most of our time making marks and orchestrating events with long gestations and repercussions well beyond our formal engagement.”

NZIA: “We agree: climate change is an urgent issue for architects”

Practice | Te Kāhui Whaihanga responds to an editorial published in Architecture NZ magazine saying, “…a high level of competency in [sustainability] must be maintained by architects throughout their careers.”

Editorial: Chris Barton on a duty of care

Practice | Architecture NZ editor Barton notes a lack of language regarding sustainability in our professional bodies’ codes. “Distressingly … there is no mention of climate change in the NZRAB’s code.”

Opinion: A planetary price to pay

Practice | Pip Cheshire discusses the architects’ role in saving the world: “At issue, though, is whether we architects can effect any meaningful change in our bailiwick…”

Opinion: Twenty minutes in Tāmaki Makaurau

Practice | As a sort of homage to the late architect and New Yorker Michael Sorkin and his book Twenty Minutes in Manhattan, columnist Karamia Müller muses on her 20-minute walking commute through the City of Sails.

Editorial: Chris Barton on male architects

Practice | Please no, not Alvar Aalto. Finnish female director Virpi Suutari’s brilliant examination, Aalto, lays bare some uneasy home truths about the man lauded as an icon of modernism.

Opinion: Our moral agenda

Practice | In her first column for Architecture NZ, Dr Karamia Müller asks: “When we celebrate the best, is it for the best?”

Opinion: We do not live by bread alone

Practice | Pip Cheshire: “…it seems a fair assumption to me: that is, that aside from making private delights, we might also do our best on main street for the body politic”.

Editorial: Chris Barton on rebuilding Christchurch

Practice | Barton notes, “…the government received plenty of really good advice on what to do from a variety of people, notably the ‘Share an Idea’ urban planning community-involvement exercise … which the government mostly ignored.”

Opinion: Conversations

Practice | Lynda Simmons muses: “For me, architectural conversations are important because, quite simply, there is so much to think about and, therefore, talk about.”

Opinion: Awake awake

Practice | Pip Cheshire muses, “…the phoenix-like re-emergence of the design press after the woes of COVID’s first assault has begot a major thirst for content.”

Editorial: Chris Barton on reversing climate change

Practice | The Government and industry bodies are finally taking a policy stand on climate change in the built environment. Architecture NZ editor Barton explores how these compare and how they might play out.

Opinion: Keeping the Queen clean

Practice | “The desire to return to ‘normal’ is a potent motivation but there is an awful feeling that perhaps this time we may have ‘cooked our goose’…” Pip Cheshire muses on the future of Queen St.

Opinion: Parallel education systems

Practice | Lynda Simmons looks forward to the day when architectural students can move between Māori and Pākehā systems of learning.

Editorial: Chris Barton on post-COVID environmentalism

Practice | The Architecture NZ editor weighs in on experts’ claims that sustainable buildings will become mainstream in a post-COVID era.

Opinion: Time for a planner-free zone

Practice | Pip Cheshire dreams of a ‘planner-free zone’, where tradition is set aside in favour of research, analysis and innovation.

Opinion: The disappearing plan and section

Practice | “I need to close my eyes often when looking at projects on screens, in a feeble attempt to control the visual information as the architectural object rotates,” Lynda Simmons laments.

Editorial: Chris Barton on COVID-era architecture

Practice | The effects of healthy obsessions on architecture can be profound. The challenge for architects now will be creating something that also deals with fear: something inspirational and uplifting.

Opinion: Remaking our country

Practice | Pip Cheshire: “We have a choice as a profession…shall we seize the day and use this time of upheaval to speak out and be agents of change?”