Founded by Max Farndale 1947 - 2018
Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, known for making cathedrals and concert halls out of paper, is designing 20,000 new homes for refugees in northwest Kenya. Ban, who won the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2014, will be working with the UN Habitat to build homes in the Kalobeyei refugee settlement in Kenya’s Turkana region.
After the 2011 earthquake in Christchurch, Ban designed a temporary replacement for the church made out of cardboard.
Ban, a minimalist who uses materials ranging from cardboard and paper to beer crates, is known for his work on emergency housing. He’s built DIY refugee shelters in Rwanda after the 1994 genocide and in Nepal after its 2015 earthquake2015. His paper log houses have been used in Japan, Turkey, and India. In Kenya, Ban says his goal is to design housing simple enough for residents to replicate and maintain by themselves—Kenya’s refugee population, at about 400,000, is expected to continue growing.
“The key thing will be to design and construct shelter where no or little technical supervision is required, and use materials that are locally available and eco-friendly. It’s important that the houses can be easily maintained by inhabitants,” Ban said after visiting the Kalobeyei settlement last week.
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On Wednesday, the council’s Finance Committee is being asked to give urgent funding approval to purchase 17 new battery powered trains, or Independently Powered Electric Multiple Units (IPEMUs) as they’re referred to officially.
The council paper and the full business case notes that the urgency is because a deposit needs to be made by September this year to ensure delivery of these new trains in 2019 which is when the capacity constraints really start to bite. Given how plainly obvious this issue has been for some considerable time, it’s a bit absurd that it now needs to be made so quickly.
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This pair of enormous mirrored-steel boxes connected by a glazed bridge were designed by Antonini + Darmon and RMDM, to complement and extend an aluminium-clad archive facility outside Paris.
The CTLES (Technical Centre for Books of Higher Education) is a national public administrative institution located in the Parisian suburb of Bussy-Saint-Georges, around 25 kilometres east of the city centre.
The facility is operated by the Ministry for National Education, Higher Education and Research, and is responsible for the preservation and communication of documents for universities and research centres in Paris.
Continue to the full article here on de Zeen
Wintec and Waikato District Council will launch a cadetship programme next year that will create employment opportunities for civil engineering students and ensure the council has a highly skilled and qualified workforce.
The cadetship scheme is an opportunity for Wintec students studying the civil elements of the New Zealand Diploma in Engineering and the Bachelor of Engineering Technology. Under the scheme, students will work and study part-time for two years before completing one year of bonded employment with Waikato District Council.
Wintec Chief Executive Mark Flowers says the scheme is a great example of Wintec working with industry partners to deliver real-world training for students and highly qualified graduates to employers.
“I really commend Waikato District Council for driving this initiative – it’s a win win for all. For our students it’s a great opportunity to study and work in a real-world environment and get the benefits of having employment in their chosen career path.
“We’re training students for a rapidly changing world and the practical and soft skills they learn through on the job training are critical for their success. Working with industry also means we continue to be relevant and authentic in what we deliver to meet their needs.”
Waikato District Council will recruit cadets from Wintec year one and two students this year to launch the scheme for the 2018 study year. The aim is to have up to six civil engineering student placements with Waikato District Council by year three.
“We’re delighted to work with Wintec on this scheme and we regard this as an effective recruitment tool,” says Waikato District Council’s General Manager Service Delivery Tim Harty.“The council is considered to be a perfect training ground for students to develop a range of skills, knowledge and technical experience. The cadetship will provide real-life practical experiences as well as the opportunity to be immersed in a range of areas relevant to the cadet’s specific area of study.”
Wintec is also working with other industry partners to secure similar cadetships for its students.
| A Wintec release || July 24, 2017 |||
New Zealanders have long been known for their love affair with the sea, but owning a boat is seen as an expensive exercise for most. Tauranga-based boat design company Hallmarine Design has come up with a solution: its Purekraft boats, which are flatpacked kitsets, a bit like IKEA furniture, making them far cheaper to ship around and easier to construct.
Elly Strang writes in Idealog - It’s a romantic notion that plays right into the Kiwi ideal of DIY and do it yourself – building a boat from scratch. However, aside from professional boat builders, most wouldn’t attempt to build their own for fear of the expenses involved – or worse yet, the risk of a poorly put together, leaky boat.
However, Jarrod Hall of Tauranga-based Hallmarine Design says his company has a solution for hobbyists: A boat which has parts that are cut by a CNC machine, with ink markings to show where parts meet and should be welded. It is then folded and are flatpacked to reduce shipping costs.
The result is a boat that’s innovative in the same way IKEA furniture was when it first shook up the furniture scene: A cheaper, build-it-yourself product that can be constructed from scratch, if you follow the (in depth) instructions. There's also the ability to customise the motor, seats and paint job.
“It appeals to those with the do-it-yourself kind of attitude, and they also know that it’s been well built, considering they’ve built it themselves,” Hall says.
Understandably, there’s a few more components to building a boat than say, a bookshelf.
Hall says it depends on the size and the model, but the design process couldn’t get much easier in terms of building a boat. While there may be hundreds of components, parts are printed by the machine and interlock together, while Hallmarine Design folds as many parts of the boat as possible so it reducing welding and build times, as well as wastage.
Continue to read the full article in Idealog here
Air New Zealand’s inaugural service to Haneda Tokyo has departed with the Boeing 787-9 aircraft scheduled to touch down in Tokyo at 11.00pm (local time).
The new Haneda service will depart Auckland on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays from July - May, offering customers a second point of entry to the Japanese capital alongside the airline’s daily flights to Narita Tokyo Airport.
Air New Zealand Chief Revenue Officer Cam Wallace says demand for travel between the two countries continues to soar and the new Auckland-Haneda direct route will boost annual capacity to Japan by 15%.
“Located just 20 kilometres from downtown Tokyo, Haneda Airport offers great convenience for Kiwis heading to the central city and for Japanese tourists travelling to New Zealand.
“With the 2019 Rugby World Cup and 2020 Summer Olympics ahead, we look forward to building on our existing services and further growing demand for travel at both ends of the route.”
Air New Zealand also operates a seasonal service between Auckland and the Japanese city of Osaka between October and March.
Japan is one of New Zealand’s fastest growing outbound travel markets, with the number of Kiwis travelling to Japan up 25% to the year ending May 2017. Japan is New Zealand’s sixth largest tourism market and the number of Japanese visiting New Zealand also grew over this period by 8.5% to 101,616.
| An Aire New Zealand release || July 21, 2017 |||
Spontaneous Glass Breakage in New Zealand Buildings is a problem. Here is an open letter delivered to industry penned by Ross Eathorne from Solar Gard highlighting the problem
China's trillion-dollar 'Belt and Road Initiative' is still in its early stages, but one expert says New Zealand shouldn't take too long to work out how we can benefit from the project. Sam Sachdeva reports.
Chinese investment is always a touchy subject in New Zealand politics - and that goes double in an election year.
It's no surprise then that ears were pricked during Premier Le Keqiang's visit earlier this year by the signing of a memorandum of agreement between New Zealand and China which could lead to millions more dollars flowing in through a Chinese strategy to lead on the world stage.
Yet while the Belt and Road Initiative has been around for several years, it is in many ways still a mystery.
Stephen Jacobi, executive director of the NZ China Council, has just returned from a trip to China to get a better appreciation of what the Belt and Road Initiative may mean for New Zealand.
The initiative was first pitched by Chinese President Xi Jinping during a 2013 visit to Kazakhstan as a way of improving transport links, trade ties and personal connections through a number of projects along ancient trade routes.
Since then, a number of infrastructure projects have been developed across Asia and elsewhere, with overall spending for the initiative possibly running into the trillions.
Paul Clark, a professor of Chinese at Auckland University and associate director of the New Zealand Contemporary China Research Centre, says Belt and Road is “very much part of the Chinese government’s rhetoric” as it looks to grow its economy.
“It has great promise I think in providing an outlet for Chinese industry and construction in particular to engage with Central Asian and other countries to use up surplus supply of construction people, workers and equipment and so forth.”
Widening belt
While the possibility of Chinese-funded road and rail has dominated much of the discussion in New Zealand, Jacobi says “the real play” in our corner of the world is less about infrastructure and more about connecting up with China through including the flow of goods, services and people.
The most radical of the new Ultime trimarans, the incredible Gitana 17 is designed to foil at over 50 knots and cross up to 900 miles a day, crewed by just one solo skipper. Elaine Bunting talked to designer Guillaume Verdier at the launch
A revolutionary 100ft fully foiling oceangoing trimaran capable of covering more than 900 miles in a day and sailing at speeds of 50 knots was launched in Lorient this week. Designed by Guillaume Verdier, the foil genius behind the America’s Cup winning Emirates Team New Zealand, Gitana 17 is designed to be sailed solo and to beat the round the world record.
Gitana 17 is the latest of the race boats backed by Baron Benjamin de Rothschild. The 100ft ‘Ultime’ trimaran is the culmination of three years of work by the team and brings together developments from areas as diverse as the Vendée Globe IMOCA 60s, the America’s Cup and the MOD70 trimarans.
This is a beast of a boat and significantly different from others in the growing ‘Ultime’ development class such as François Gabart’s Macif and Thomas Coville’s Sodebo. For the first time, this is a boat designed around foil performance.
According to the design team, Gitana 17 will be able to foil at speeds of 48-50 knots in 16-25 knots of true wind and seas of 6-8m – typical Atlantic conditions. It could also sail across the Southern Ocean in non-foiling mode at up to 40 knots.
“Foiling is not that [hard] but to do that and be stable in waves is a lot more difficult and this is a first stage to doing that,” explained Guillaume Verdier. “Previously the boats were designed to go offshore and slowly the foils got into that, but we have designed the appendages as a principal [part] and tried to have a platform that goes well with that.
“It makes a boat that is a little heavier because there are more systems to control the foil, more hydraulics and the platform is stiffer in torsion.”
The foils on Gitana 17 share some common thinking with those on the America’s Cup boats – the outer float foils are an L-shape. The main daggerboard on the central hull, however, is a shape never seen before on these boats and features a large horizontal component to help with roll control.
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Palace of the Alhambra, Spain
By: Charles Nathaniel Worsley (1862-1923)
From the collection of Sir Heaton Rhodes
Oil on canvas - 118cm x 162cm
Valued $12,000 - $18,000
Offers invited over $9,000
Contact: Henry Newrick – (+64 ) 27 471 2242
Mount Egmont with Lake
By: John Philemon Backhouse (1845-1908)
Oil on Sea Shell - 13cm x 14cm
Valued $2,000-$3,000
Offers invited over $1,500
Contact: Henry Newrick – (+64 ) 27 471 2242
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