Surrealist building

Sandra is right. New Zealand is a surrealist country too. There's almost one million people living in Auckland... and more than 900,000 cars in this area. There's only one bridge to cross to the north shore... and it doesn't matter from which part of the city you come from and where are you going, all major motorways converge to the city center. No wonder that there's always cogestion at the so called "spaghetti junction".

Now the plan is to charge $10 per day, to all motorists crossing or going into the city. "The Ministry of Transport's Auckland Road Pricing Evaluation Study examines road pricing and parking levies as a means of reducing congestion and raising revenue for investment in land transport." Well, if you charge $3,500NZD per car, to all 900,000 vehicles... that is a good way of increasing revenue. They could also charge a levy of $10NZD per window on your car... or $20NZD per wheel... and we would have a very "retro" middle age taxation system. What the city needs is public transport! People are not to blame for having too many cars, when the city's public transport is a nightmare.

It all starts with bad urban planning. There are too many apartment buildings at the city center. I am not familiar with the regulations, but it seems to me, that the number of compulsory parking spots per persons using those builldings is too low... or probably there's no such regulation.

Speaking of bad regulations. The new building regulations will give full monopoly to the "master builders". My opinion is that they already are like a mafia, and too much overprotected. Can you imagine empowering the mexican maistro albanil? That's why the bulilding standards are like Sandra said, like the "pioneers" times. I haven't got time to write about it, but trust me... the construction methods and materials are terrible. And I blame the masters builders. Giving them full monopoly over design and construction... may God have mercy on us! or we may end up with buildings like the "upside downer", "crooked house" or the "135 deg house". I heard recently that the roof of the new Auckland stadium collapsed. No wonder if they build skyscrapers with wooden thootpicks!

"Historias de casas" has a very nice collection of houses explained. Also enlightning is this article about modern buildings by Slate Magazine. (via) Quite interesting (but not my favourite) is slide nr.8 : Louisville time-line skyline, there's Mies van der Rohe, Philip Johnson and John Burgee's domed neoclassical tower and Michael Graves' controversial Postmodern icon, the Humana Building. Another example of strange buildings is the Chiat/Day Building by Frank Gehry, which seems inspired by the Bizarrquitecture from Worth1000, well, no surprises there.

ciao