Design Principles Pod
Architecture. A hot topic, a buzz word, a realm for the rich and famous, or the thing that your step uncle does? We will be unpacking the good, the bad and the downright reality of the architectural and construction industry. With insights from industry professionals and personal anecdotes from our three hosts Ben, Gerard and Sam, you will be given a look behind the closed pages of those fancy looking moleskins. Tune in and redline out.
Design Principles Pod
Cultivated City: Designed Solutions vs. Organic Growth
A city can make you breathe easier—or grind your teeth—before you’ve even named why. We follow that feeling from a flimsy townhouse hinge to the rhythm of a street that forces a ute to crawl, exploring how materials, widths, and mixed uses quietly choreograph daily life. In this episode we pull apart modernism’s big promises, tip our hats to classical street smarts, and ask what a genuinely New Zealand urban vernacular might look like—one with corrugate, brick, and crafted facades that hold up to weather, touch, and time.
The heart of the chat is human-scale design. We talk walkability you can feel, where a tight lane and rougher surface set a natural speed limit, and where a dairy under a flat means your day stacks neatly without a dashboard. Medellín’s gondolas and covered escalators show how access can reverse decline when you cut the time penalty for the very people who make a city run. Christchurch’s rebuild sits in the balance: a missed chance for bold spines of transit and tighter hubs, yet proof that even partial wins matter when applied consistently. And yes, fares and parking prices quietly steer behaviour more than slogans ever will.
Inside the front door, priorities tell on us. The “double garage with everything” inflates into a third of a house, while the rooms we actually live in shrink. We argue for smaller, better spaces—nooks, ladders, odd corners that make memories—over storage for cars. Materials matter too: brick can beat timber on cost and presence, corrugate deserves a smarter role in city scales, and layered skins can bring the street back to hand-level detail. If there’s a takeaway, it’s this: design works when it speaks plainly to how people move, meet, and make a day. Subscribe, share with a city-loving mate, and tell us—what one change would make your street slower, safer, and more alive?
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SPEAKER_01:Shall we do a post-rationalized intro? While we're still recording?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. In a world. A world full of full of lessons to take it upon themselves to say how much they hate cars.
SPEAKER_01:Hello and welcome back to the pod. It's been a while for me. Glad to be back. Happy to be here. Today, myself and Sam are pub chatting, and we don't really know what we're talking about, but we're gonna talk it out and hope you guys enjoy the ride. This is our conversation.
SPEAKER_00:Beautiful. Great network. Lovely, mate. It's interesting living in a you know, in a townhouse, in a developer type townhouse thing where we're renting at the moment. And I reckon this thing wouldn't be more than 15 years old. And everything's been done rather cheap. On the surface it looks fine. It's tidy. And then you realise that everything is broken. Every door is broken. Every window latch is broken. None of the locks, snib locks on like the internal doors work, like all of these little things. And you can just like that day one quality is fine, but you know, like a decade, like the place is falling apart.
SPEAKER_01:Kitchen cabinets, four doors falling off.
SPEAKER_00:It probably doesn't help that our that our baby Hugo kind of sits in the sits in the kitchen and just opens and closes drawers all the time.
SPEAKER_01:Product testing.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, totally. I actually feel like so everyone's got to do this at some point. Like if you ever think about building a house, go and live in like a spec home that's 10 years old and see how shit it is. And then make the decision whether you want to use MDF. Do that real real heavy VE.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's it's it's pretty epic-year when you go back to projects that still look remote. It's like oh Yeah. Like it's it's possible. Can be done.
SPEAKER_00:Oh dude, totally. Like and think about our place down south, like it's you know, it's not lived in permanently, but because we Airbnb a lot of the time, you've got a lot of people coming through it regularly that have no care, ultimately.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Some parties?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, it's a bit small for parties, but even so, like, you know, you don't really know what people get up to. But it's like just as good as it was day one. And this is like two years on, you know. I guess I know that's not that long, but still it's sort of quite nice to know that when you do something of quality, it stays.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's sometimes it's worth up speaking those draw hangers.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Up spick those draw runners, those hinges? It's just the little things, uh that's kitchens can age pretty quick, eh, once once things start getting out of square.
SPEAKER_00:I guess because your tolerance is so tight that it becomes and everything's used all the time and quite not aggressively, but it's quite a lot. And and yeah, how often have you had a handful of stuff and you've like kicked a door drawer closed or you know, that sort of thing?
SPEAKER_01:Take something short with your knee.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, exactly, man. Yeah. That's why a full stainless steel kitchen was the dream. Commercial kitchen. Our ultimate kitchen one day is just to have a stain a commercial kitchen, basically, but at home.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, big folded, something raw, heavy duty.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And have it designed in a way that you can just get a hose and just gun it out to clean it.
SPEAKER_01:Clean room. Big washroom.
SPEAKER_00:Something so disgusting yet satisfying about like the washdown of a commercial kitchen. I don't know if you've ever worked in kitchens, but it's disgusting. But at the same time, it's very, very satisfying.
SPEAKER_01:I did dishes at Metalhorn once.
SPEAKER_00:Oh yeah, nice.
SPEAKER_01:For my flight mate who was a chef there. Military five.
SPEAKER_00:Oh man. Matterhorn was so good. I wish Wellington stood places like that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that was a real nice bottle. The kitchen was funny. It was like such leftover space, back alley.
SPEAKER_00:You know we did the um odory in the old toilets, the old Matterhorn toilets.
SPEAKER_01:Is that all that backs onto?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Well, yes, I never knew this until we did it. But you know how you'd go, particularly, I think it was the the gents. You kind of go through the bar, through this little thing area, and feel like you kind of go to a little offshoot. Yeah. A dead end offshoot. That backed on to left bank, and that is now the odory.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Swapping those toilets.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is pretty cool. Nice to kind of continue that legacy.
SPEAKER_01:Left bank's an interesting development. The the the the melling moss, the what what is it, the heart? What timber do they use? Macrocarpa, microcarpa everywhere.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:But it's yeah, it's a strange way that how much of a vertical, deep space it is, how little light, how many pigeons there are.
SPEAKER_00:It doesn't do itself any favours from a lack of light. You said that verticality, lack of light. And it's it being a dead end, I think, doesn't help. If it was a thoroughfare, a bit more of a thoroughfare, then maybe it wouldn't suffer so much. But having that kind of really sketchy, dark, dead endy bit, even though you can get through it, that goes up notorious threat. I think that that does it no favors, though.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. It was Did you ever go to that um was it Profit? Did Profit do that fitter of strata? The Warrington Souder. Then Goro used to go there for a coffee and a they used to do this Minaz chicken sandwich.
SPEAKER_02:Nice.
SPEAKER_01:But yeah, other than that, well, I don't think that lasts very long as a cafe, maybe for obvious reasons.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Well, I mean, like, when the odorie went in there, I was when Anna did it, I was like, what are you doing? This is insanity. This is the worst place to have a breakfast cafe.
SPEAKER_01:But it's time, I know a while to go.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, exactly. But and then saying that, it's done, it's gone gangbusters. It's done so well. And I think it's brought it's brought so much life into that area. So anyway, we're off to a flyer. What are we actually going to talk about?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, well, I was thinking about urban planetic, which you know, we're already we're already talking about urban planetic.
SPEAKER_00:Here we are, sketchy spaces.
SPEAKER_01:We're well out of the way.
SPEAKER_00:Trying to avoid sketchy spaces.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I just think like I guess over the over the years you go to architecture school, everyone talks up modernism and celebrates the outrageous architecture of the world. And you don't often hear much said or much in a positive light said about classical architecture or classical, maybe, maybe just an urban about lots of city layouts of old old cities.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, you're saying people aren't championing the layout of Rome, but everyone's high and mighty on Manhattan kind of Yeah, but then uh people who don't have a degree in architecture all all love these other places.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:It's like are we arrogantly unaware or refuse to listen to half the world that you know loves a certain style of architecture and make it make a point of visiting time and time again?
SPEAKER_00:Are you talking about architectural aesthetic in terms of the built environment, or are you talking more about the cityscape and the plan of the city?
SPEAKER_01:I think I think both, both hand in hand. City city types. Well, you've got me Corb's radiant city where you want to talk down half of Paris and go park life, like the bigger parks and towers versus Rome, or not that I've haven't been to Europe, so live like going to the Caribbean too.
SPEAKER_00:Corb's model in a way has been tested. And often, oh it's been actually it has been tested multiple times. And often or it's I think it's probably and I'm gonna probably get shut down heavily for this, Bergen's widely discovered to be or recognized to be a failure. And that trying like the human nature and human condition just doesn't really respond that well to living in that like high, high density environment.
SPEAKER_01:Well, it's not even I'd say it's the same density from an urban scale, but just like person to person, very dense. You're living in a giant tower with a ginormous amount of people with beside and around you.
SPEAKER_00:I think it's also a um like a societal thing. Us as New Zealanders, we're like so slow to, if ever, going to adopt that style of living, I reckon, because we're just we're well, generationally indoctrinated into having that quarter acre dream type concept. I think we've talked about this before. Yeah, we do want to that's it, everybody everybody wants their own bit of space. And so like even apartment living is kind of a little bit not well, I know, i it it not frowned upon, but people kind of go, oh, I don't really want to do that. Whereas, you know, in international cities, it's super common and people live their entire lives in those sort of environments. They'll probably actually find the wide open space of a you know, a freehold six hundred square meter patch of land a pain in the ass because you've got to maintain it and you've got all this other stuff, uh other considerations. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I guess there's the Oscar Nehemiah City Bris Brasilia, Brasilia, or which was built on like a giant curved road and a another road.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I've just been scrolling around it on um Google Maps, and there's a lot of razor wire and YouTube fences around departments. It's at the stage where the park has developed, I guess. A lot of these uh cities that were built on that sort of idea. The park, which is kind of like covered all through um sort of where Russia, the SSSR whatever is a city, another city I was just looking at in Russia. Mag Tagorsk is the most savior-looking place you've ever seen. It's like it's kind of like one of those modernist principles, maybe with a little bit more uh detailing, but very spread out. It's a little biased, but it looks pretty good. And you're gonna be walking a long way.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, of course I've been to Invercargle.
SPEAKER_01:I mean just gone.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, you'll get very fit.
SPEAKER_01:Well, Invercargo was designed when you knew it was gonna be a giant city. So it's like really wide roads, and it was like, oh yeah, one day this will all be giant buildings.
SPEAKER_00:It's still it still may yet be there. It's gonna take off, mate. It may yet mature. Still in its infancy. So do the future. Do you know what I reckon the the commonality of or the common theme that I'm kind of already seeing in these, let's say designed and not necessarily failures of cities, but maybe more challenging places to live, are is is just that, that they are they're designed. The ones cities that are the most successful, probably, are the ones that are old and have organically grown, because they're grown organically to fit the way that people want to live in them. And they'll you people will come and try and change that to to suit modern life. But ultimately, human nature is human nature, regardless of whether we're in the 21st century or in the 17th century, I think people are probably still going to want to live in a very similar manner. And so I do wonder how much of the designing nature of a city is what leads to its uncomfortable nature or it's in a way its downfall, you know. If you think of Phoenix, for instance, which I think's probably widely regarded to be one of the most modern fully designed places in the fact in the sense that there was nothing there, and then it's all been created from scratch, and it's terrible. Absolutely terrible.
SPEAKER_01:Is that in the States, Phoenix?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah. Um, grids, big roads. Yeah, that's it. It's just it's just a giant grid, big roads, big box retail, car parks everywhere. It's designed for the car. And maybe that the design mentality there was the wrong one. But equally, what you're trying to do is you're trying to force people in a direction that you want them to go. And it's the same idea with Corb's. Corb's concept is that you're trying to force people into a box that they might know what to live in. And I remember when we were at university, there was that um I can't remember what American University, the study was done at, but it was in a landscape course or something, and they instead of landscaping the garden, they just left the grass and then over the course of 12 months just saw the natural path that people took and then designed based on the natural path that people took. And then they compared it to, I think, what students had designed for that space prior to going through the concept of letting it naturally evolve, and it was completely different. And I think that's the kind of thing is you're you're quite often trying to not pigeonhole but direct people in a way that they don't want to be directed and therefore it fails.
SPEAKER_01:I think just some of these like modernist ideals were just a bit shipped.
SPEAKER_00:Here's Gerard. Take down the modernism.
SPEAKER_01:Well, from an urban planning perspective, definitely. I think we can appreciate the architecture as like a form. Although I'm saying that, all the epic modernist buildings they've all had to be renovated like thoroughly because built terribly.
SPEAKER_00:I think that's there's no there's there's no um there's no hiding there. I think that's pretty widely understood that the s the aesthetic outweighed everything.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's yeah. I think like from from a city perspective, you know, like the extreme lengths to design around a car, like the super block sort of idea of blocking function planning, you know, you know, city with house here, shops here, park there. Whereas I think a lot of the old cities, because of so much layering, not the things everyone knows. I don't need to tell you how suck eggs.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:The overlapping of program, a shop on the down for downstairs, maybe an office above that and then apartments above that. The the intermingling, the ramming together of life ultimately makes for a more interesting place or more interesting place to be, rather than just driving 20 minutes down the road to get your get your shit and then driving 20 months back.
SPEAKER_00:Head back to the suburbs, yeah. Suburban model of living is terrible. Um and I also think that like you like you said, that cross-pollination of um of program, you know, commercial mixed with residential, mixed with hospitality, mixed with retail, is so important because you, you know, you like I you know, like I was just saying, I don't I really don't have to leave a five-block radius in Lyle Bay. Works here, supermarkets here, houses here, kids' daycares here, beaches here, you know, the airports here. And that obviously you don't want to feel confined to that radius, but at the same time, there's comfort in knowing that I don't have to drive 20 minutes to the hut or something to do shopping. Whereas a lot of cities are modelled that way. Whether you, you know, you've got suburbia and then you've got to travel to the big to the to the retail precinct and things like that. And you can kind of even see that in I think you have towns in New Zealand that are evolving or growing.
SPEAKER_01:Mostly the new one.
SPEAKER_00:Wanaker, for instance, is very much suburban periphery and then urban center with a big box under the toe. But you have to drive. You have to drive pretty much any time you want to go to a supermarket or to the stores or anything. You could walk for sure. It's not a nice environment to walk in, but it could take you up to 45 minutes to an hour, depending on where you live, you know.
SPEAKER_01:Down the side of the road, down the bow.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and like that's there's not a like it's not that realistic. Fine if you're, you know, young and fit and don't have kids or whatever, or somewhere to be, but you know, if you've kind of if you're not any of those things, it becomes a bit of a hindrance in a way.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I think like some of these older cities, the how compact things were just seems to work so much nicer for walkability and small narrow roads as well seems to be a big thing. Like Japan having tiny little roads and their kids walk to school or whatever with no real sidewalk.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I think the beautiful thing with that is like all these older cities are designed for either very early vehicles or not for vehicles at all, right? Designed for horse and car or what have you. And modern vehicles now are just too big. And so they're forced out, and it kind of actually makes them far more pleasant places to be.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, when you go in Japan, you probably don't have too many RAM trucks like F-1050s or anything. It's interesting. I think their plywood is is it nine based on a different module, 900 by 1800? So the the beds of their trucks are smaller? Or like that's why plywood doesn't fit in most of them stock Japanese trays on the old U.
SPEAKER_00:I didn't actually realize that. Interesting.
SPEAKER_01:So like the the Kai truck or these these smaller little utility vehicles.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I I think like the narrow, narrow roads, narrow windy roads. And then surface treatment as well, if you don't differentiate between road and sidewalk for you know, city roads anyway, probably maybe not on the motorway, but like paving and then when the car's not there, it's understood as a pedestrian space. I guess they tried to do it on Lower Cuba, but not sure how successful that's been.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I also think that that Lower Cuba section of of Wellington as well is not higher. There's not enough traffic for it to be realized, if you know what I mean. It's too much. Foot traffic and and vehicle traffic, really.
SPEAKER_01:You're talking about the I used to walk up and down there quite a bit back in the day. I was I don't know, just a a prick just out of architecture skills side, like make it make a point to work walk down the middle. But then you get crap. That floor down there?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So I think like it's still too wide. Like it it needs like a kink in the middle somewhere, like a little snake. So then you can't actually like gun it down there.
SPEAKER_00:But back to the surface treatment thing, like as well, you think about older cities. London's a good example, for instance, where a lot of the streets are cobbled. So you can't really just foot to the floor down a little urban, urban street. One, because like you previously said, they're narrow, they're windy, and then the surface is pretty unforgiving. But it makes them like quite interesting places to walk. And it does sort of marry that, you know, walking journey in with the road quite nicely. And that, you know, I feel like we're too bedded to making it accessible for vehicles first, and then oh, it'd be nice if people could walk down it, but that's an afterthought. We're still a very in New Zealand in particular, a very vehicle-centric society.
SPEAKER_01:Thousand percent. And then it brings up a sort of the cultural aspect. If you're then gonna bring in an idea that works awesomely in Japan or Spain, and then you're gonna try and lamb it into Lower Cuba, and that's the only place somebody's ever gonna come in contact with that type of driving.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:You're flooring it down manas and then you're hooking a right down Cuba in an order, but then you're like it to change all your learned lessons of driving. But good luck to you.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I mean, and that's the thing too. I mean, you can see it. Take the cycleways, for instance. The majority of the cycleways in Wellington, with the exception of the one around the waterfront, I'd say, have been widely regarded as failures. Because you're trying to, and not from a cyclist point of view, but from pedestrian and vehicle point of view, because you're you're trying to change everybody's mindset and the way that they expect to drive and operate in the city, and it's too located, location-specific. Whereas if you didn't give anybody a choice and just did it blanket everywhere. So if you just say you had a cycleway typology model and it was just applied throughout the country, okay, there'd be a decade-long of teething period, but then ultimately everybody would just understand that that's the way you operate. It's like in Germany where the rule for the cycleway is I'm I can't remember if it's on the left or the right, but if you bought, you buy, if you're everyone, it's a shared footpath, and if you're cycling, you're on the let's say it's the left. And so if you're a pedestrian, you walk on the right, know that you have to give away to cyclists, and cyclists have right away, kind of thing. And that's just understood.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Whereas, like universally understood. Whereas I think the issue that we have in New Zealand in particular, when we're trying to adopt these models of things that have worked successfully overseas is likely super lower Cuba, we do it in this tiny little we're too scared to do it, blanket across an entire city. We do it in these tiny little pockets, and therefore you're never gonna get anybody like adapting to it because it's too incremental, you know.
SPEAKER_01:Do you know what the rule requirements are around road widths? Because I wonder if that's legislation, obviously, probably becomes quite a factor in trying to push any idea. Yeah. Like do you know High Street in Auckland? It's got a um so now a little it's kind of like a service lane, I guess. But I think that's a good example. There's just so many people walking across the road all the time that it's pretty pretty hard to garnet down there. I wonder if that's the solution that you increase the danger or the increase the perceived likelihood of somebody getting run over.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:One's in Japan having no real sidewalk and everyone sort of just walking down the side or something. You can't really garnet past them unless you're actually a crazy person and gonna run somebody over.
SPEAKER_00:Do you think I mean that's but that's the correct thing? Yeah, but that's the that's the problem, is that because with driver-centric society, everybody who's in a car feels more entitled than anyone that's not. I always find it funny when you're walking in the pouring rain and somebody's in a vehicle who is not soaking wet and they don't give way to you to like let you cross or something, just just Oh walking me. Well, it's more just like, just like be a kind person and don't like you know, like two seconds out of your day, I don't have to get soaking wet, but you know, I'm in a car so I can go. Nah, you're slowing down vibe.
SPEAKER_01:I want to be waiting I want to wait extra two seconds at the lights.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So many examples of of cities that I I um is reminded of uh Poundry? Pound Brie? Have you heard of that one?
SPEAKER_00:No, is that into Charles and tried to design a city? I have heard of this, but I didn't know what it was called.
SPEAKER_01:So it's a new I I mean it's 100% new, so it was designed. I know high-hundry um people who work in classical buildings, and although uh I guess planning's quite classical sort of central sort of square sort of thing. Although this central square is kind of more of a car park, it's probably one of the critiques.
SPEAKER_00:It's like Palmerston North.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, but it was all I guess homemade classical architecture, but it's a raging success, which is the crazy part. Often we're a when the first people to sort of rip out somebody making old buildings or new buildings look old.
SPEAKER_00:But the fact that this has been done in a few towns now and they're all a raging success is why I think that the even though it's faux, but that h faux kind of historic nature of the township make people a bit more respectful of it versus whether it was just fully a very contemporary city or something where it's just concrete and glass everywhere. And so you're sort of forced into that mentality of fast pace pure because of the architecture. Whereas I feel older style architecture, for whatever reason, makes you slow down. The fact the the ornamentation of it, the texture and the depth, and you we either consciously or subconsciously notice that you just move slower around that sort of putting, and maybe it's because I mean people people like us are probably stopping to appreciate it. Others may not be, but it still has the same impact impact on them. It'd be interesting to know. This is how much research we did for this off the cuff episode, but it'd be interesting to know if if there is actually any meat on that bone, because it I've I totally reckon that that has that concept.
SPEAKER_01:The the visual complexity of some of the architecture is undeniably nice to look at. I'm just reminded again and again of how maybe it was just our teachers at uni, how anti sort of classical architecture you're kind of educated to be. Yay modernism. Remember the one light bulb moment I think was when Guy married in our lecture, was like I can forget what he said specifically, but it was along the lines of Luke Busier is a dick.
SPEAKER_00:There we go, Guy, you've we've got you on record.
SPEAKER_01:Can you gave permission to like as a as a young student who's a non-fanboy like everybody has to be? Maybe we are actually allowed to think critically and not um assume everything we've been told is is the correct way. But I think back to old Poundbury, it shares that mixed function and um it's called windy narrow streets, and they I think the word relatively uh forward thinking on sort of at least one-third, I think, affordable housing rather than like blocking. I think just if modernism's taught us anything, like separating a function is maybe just a disaster unless it's like industry. We probably won't want a coal mine in the middle of the city or a giant truck stop in the town square. Let's be reasonable.
SPEAKER_00:But then again, there are examples of that that are highly successful. You know, those inner city industrial precincts that are turned mixed-use spaces around.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, mixed use definitely. But are there are there any that are still running as industrial?
SPEAKER_00:I think of like the um, you know maybe in Russia. Well, Bjaga's um power plant ski ramp building, whatever that's called. You know, like that's probably a pretty good pretty good example. You know, it'd be funny if Battersea was still uh uh not Battersea, sorry, if the tape was still a power station, you know?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah, I think the mixed-use ones are always seem to be uh on a surface level of ranging success, because you get an interesting overlapping of history. Overlapping of history is kind of maybe just always interesting because it's you're always asked a question or there's something to intrigue you, something to look at.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Whereas to make a fully new planned town a success, I think is a bit of a tall order.
SPEAKER_00:In a world where design speaks louder than words, what story does your space tell? At Ortex Acoustics, they believe great design is more than aesthetics. Every product they create strikes a perfect balance between form, function, and sustainability. Made to enhance how space sounds, looks, and feels. From using recycled materials to pioneering carbon negative wool, their commitment is to help you shape environments that inspire people and respect the planet. Explore the future of acoustics design at ortexacoustics.co.nz I feel like you need somewhere to grow organically for it to feel right, which is which makes the Poundbury success that much more interesting because it has been fabricated, but in a way that seems to like really resonate with people. But the organic growth the organic growth that other thing as well, on a flip side of something that I want to talk about from a city plan point of view, is obviously you can go you can organically grow too far in the negative, whether you whether that be Sproul. sprawl or you push push everybody out to the to the perimeter of the city or whatever or huge gentrification zones or social you know social separation and all that sort of thing and um there's actually a really really good PI episode on this but a city that sort of went way too far realized they're failing encountered it is median so as the city grew where where's that in Colombia so like as the city grew they pushed all the like lower socioeconomic people into the um favelas on the outskirts of the city but they were all the workers the majority of the people that were living in the favelas were the workers that needed to come into the city to get the centre of the city to get the city to operate but they weren't doing it because it would take them too long to travel. And so like the city, the centre of the city was starting to fail. And so what they did is um and I'm you know I'm shortening the quality of this but look into it it's really interesting but what they did is they installed escalators and gondolas. So they got escalators and covered escalators open-air covered escalators and gondolas which meant the access from the outer reaches of the city into the middle was super easy and that form of transport was either free or highly highly highly subsidised. And so what it meant is that everybody started to then be able to very easily bring themselves into the city to work and to get home in time for general life and things like that. And it totally transformed the way that the city ran because instead of it being trying to be this affluent centre with you know the lowest socioeconomic push to the outskirts which ultimately led to violence and all that sort of thing it created far more cross pollination and not overnight. Median's had its issues for many years and pretty well documented but it did help change the way that that city operated and it went from like being one of the most dangerous cities in the world to to not being at all through that mechanism. Interesting is there just one is there one gondola there's a few I can't remember the they call them funiculars maybe is it the more colourful city yeah but it's cooler the escalators are are rare you know you'll access think of let's just use Wellington as an example think of Mount V but it's well uh yeah no think Calburn for instance but there's like from from RO to from like Row to Karori almost or like RO to um or from the centre of the city to like Northland or something there's essentially stacked escalators that will access you all the way there. So walking's really easy because you just jump on an escalator and it gets you high because it's a very hilly it's a very hilly city but it gets you high quickly. Super cool place to visit um and just see that influence firsthand as well. Yeah what an interesting like solution oh no we kicked out everyone Yeah but it was basically we kicked everybody out oh now we've got no one to actually make the city hum. We need to bring everybody back how are we going to do it? And that the way that they did it just sort of was a was a silver bullet solution which was pretty cool. I mean it could have completely failed but in in that case it didn't which was which is interesting.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Did you watch that movie not long ago about Chendah Chandah Chandihar the city in India Chandihar or I'm butchering that name um City in India by Lee Corb which ended up being quite a successful city yeah I I forget the real reason why they didn't lock off the West pedestrian anybody access to all like the government grounds where where he did all his mega buildings but I think there was some issues with that so that got shut down after a while. But maybe cities just throw enough T toilet that they're just going to make it their own how much is designed versus how much is spending it to your will.
SPEAKER_00:That's exactly what I've what I've been saying where I think the the design aspect of it ultimately doesn't is isn't that successful and can kind of take you don't often get the opportunity to redesign a city right or to design a city from scratch. And like the tragedy that you know befell Christchurch did offer the opportunity to redesign Christchurch in a way and I think they've made some good they've definitely made some good moves but they've also fallen back into old patterns as well. The opportunity to try something and to make it like really really interesting. What would you have done? I probably would still I have to put me on the spot I still think it was so heavily focused like suburban focused and the like there was all the little like pilot suburban centres and so that meant that there wasn't as m that much interaction with the centre of the city. I think that has changed to a degree but those those pilot little sort of suburban centres are still there. I don't know how you change that completely but I think they had the opportunity to make it more inwardly focused. And maybe that was gonna maybe they could have done that with like better public transport corridors or easier access light rail or something like that, you know, that brought kind of going off the median model that brought more people into the centre of the city because if you if you live out in Rickerton or something you're probably not going to ever go and bother going into the center of Crush it. Yeah yeah transport it's transport's the ticket.
SPEAKER_01:Obviously to a huge degree I wonder what the payback is on cities around the world that make transport like free or almost free or how much that boosts your economy.
SPEAKER_00:Just to go back to the median model massive right because if you're if you're having to travel for work and it's expensive even busing in Wellington you're gonna probably be spending$10 a day both ways. And that's not really depending on you know depending on what your employment status is it's not really that tenable. You know and but if for that is a dollar or something then you're gonna get way more people using public transport and ultimately actually realize the benefit of of the public transport solution and they did that after COVID was after COVID they had I think it was a dollar fares or something for six to six months might have even been longer and so many more people were using the public transport network and then they put it up again overnight and those numbers just dwindled again. There's certainly validity in making public transport heavily subsidized or cheap or free.
SPEAKER_01:Well a couple I know that live slightly out of the city will end up getting a car park because one person it might be more affordable than parking in town but two people it's cheaper to hire a long term car park in town and then just drive them than it is to pub to take public transport. Yeah on the basis that you both both live in town.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah I mean that's terrible way like that's that it just should it just shouldn't be like that.
SPEAKER_01:And like and you wonder why you're demographic that you could you'd make the price slightly cheaper and then you're bringing in that demographic.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah I liked we were um I did having kids pretty much car free just walked I mean we lived in Mount Vic so it was pretty close proximity to the city we just walked everywhere. 20 to 30 minutes walking is nothing. And I think that was also after having come back from overseas when you did walk a lot you know even an hour's walk to get somewhere just kind of feel like a big deal. But then you have kids and you kind of need to use a car a lot more. But I'd like to like to move out of that and you know the fact that we're you know looking at moving and look at like buying a new house you know moving into a new house what we're looking at is somewhere where we can be more car free like kids can walk to school or whatever because I think that it there there's real value in that there's something that funny kind of just feels wrong about getting in a car every time you need to go somewhere if you could other than that sweet Swatter where your your kids are sweet to walk walk to walk to school cafes and some some loose shops around you that service some basic needs. Low Bay baby come move to Low Bay Mount Vic would have been pretty good for that yeah yeah well the only problem is you're up top of hill so if you ever want to go to the city you've got to go down the hill and then if you want to go home you've got to go back up the hill.
SPEAKER_01:We used to get sweaty on the way home yeah that's true yeah back in the day when I worked in town I used to bike um lived around Keogh Bay around Evans Bay. Yeah and that was quite nice didn't use the car a huge amount.
SPEAKER_00:I thought it was kind of nice like me from me from the mental side as well because you have this like bit of fresh air you're blasted by the wind shat the cobwebs out bit of time to think you know bit of podcast time the best part of my day yeah we're doing Rosity of nine to five and that's really good to you yeah versus that and you and it's free flowing and you're kind of you know you're you're at your own well versus cruising around the bay winding you here and you're like that versus getting in a car getting stuck in traffic getting frustrated yeah cars are pretty frustrating maybe that's just the answer to all of us just get rid of cars.
SPEAKER_01:I think I mean I think everyone kind of does recognise that but listening to old um the archymarath guys it is a I don't know it's an easy solution I think for architects to point at if we got rid of cars. Everything would be better these real utopian ideas. Yeah I'm I'm hesitant to while it sounds amazing and probably as epic and like the Netherlands.
SPEAKER_00:There's a bit of reality.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah quite like her I had a lady go up with me a while ago for driving to work and I was like trying to explain to her I was like I work in Calsen and I have to go with steel and tube or bunnings you know quite regularly pretty much every day.
SPEAKER_00:You want to do you want to uh chuck a sheet of steel on the back of your push fire well she wasn't taking one for them out so she just wanted to tell me yeah there I mean there are some there's are some real warriors out there and good on them but you know some of them just have to do normal stuff. It's um the car thing's funny though we I'm just designing concept des working on concept design for a house at the moment and the clients wanted a double garage but they could also fit bikes motorbikes a workbench and a little gym space and by the time you do that in reality that thing's 60 to 70 square meters minimum and a third of your house if not more is just garage and so I just said you can have a single garage and a big single garage but you're having a single garage and I present actually presented it to them yesterday and I thought there'd be you know I thought there'd be like big pushback because they were very like prominent in their brief must have double garage blah blah blah blah blah and I said like look you guys don't really have a space I you know part outside and they were like no cool I get it so I think it's an it's certainly a nice to have but I think it's also very easy to sway people in the other direction. If you kind of give them no option then it does help alleviate a little bit we'll do that sometimes. Yeah when you're psycho if you want this big garage it's gonna be like a couple hundred thousand dollars more reckon your budget can stretch that far and they're like nah yeah might as well just buy a car can go outside. Buy another main car yeah what do you reckon's first car goes outside and then do you put a like if the budget's looking tight is the next thing you put a kit outside like get rid of a get rid of one of the bedrooms how you can sleep in a tent in the backyard sometimes sometimes it feels like I could make that decision that's there's there's risk of spiraling into whole different conversations but I think room sizes sometimes are like take the piss.
SPEAKER_01:Like as a kid you don't need a giant room. We had one house when we moved farms and we I had the office as my bedroom. Yeah I I kind of quite enjoyed that space. It's quite like really small one whole room was like bookshelf.
SPEAKER_00:I loved my bedroom memories I loved my bedroom growing up I lived in the attic and I could stand up in one location when you came it was I had a ladder. So I climbed a ladder and you I could stand at the pitch of the gable and then my room was in the pitch. Built in bed tupped into a corner and then just had little like and it was a weird shape room. But just all these little crannies. You'd never and speak going back to the planning versus the organic kind of thing, it's a really hard space to actually design that and the reason that it was there is because our house got too small and dad had to try and find space and he was just like I'll bung one of the kids up bung bung one of the kids up on the roof like just found all the available space he could in the roof and turned it into a room and it was epic. I loved that bedroom so much.
SPEAKER_01:But that grew organically you know yeah yeah those leftover spaces can be can be epic.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I used to love um sleeping under the stairs in one of our houses. Harry Potter I was very house off from it yes but I I just liked weird small spaces though. I think that's maybe just reflective of me and the things running up designing interesting spaces that I don't know there's you could get real architectural wanky and say it was probably more the scale of a of a small child.
SPEAKER_00:So it was uh more meaningful maybe I I did I did quite enjoy yesterday in this in the meeting with these clients when they said oh we don't want a big bedroom we just want space for a bed but that's it just a bed and I was like well that's quite refreshing. Whereas most people are like in a master sorry main bedroom people are always like oh it needs to be big and need you know space for this that and the next thing and ultimately what are you doing there?
SPEAKER_01:Sleeping you know whatever else but it's not like you're in there all day you know well designing and playing sometimes just makes people think in terms of squares and boxes like those uh in section different different shape spaces. Do you know there's a project by MDRDV who probably have some nice urban design thoughts. Yeah they did a I think it was a pavilion sort of building it was more of a sculpture than a usable functioning building but it was a big square in elevation and then it was tectress shapes overlapping each other and they all painted different colours and um one had like beard. It was essentially a house in section was there's a nice uh some nice thought ideas that I program stacked rather than um rather than like linear. Yeah there should space to live like you wouldn't live on it but I think it raises some interesting ideas of overlapping spaces vertically in weird ways. If we go back to urban briefly I found a whole bunch of examples of essentially towns that were built in modernist style that had then been reclassified you could say there's one in one in Paris Robinson which is like modernist urbanist town which then this little nailey mare with an extreme vision um like rebuilt the whole town center, town square and then I guess everything else sort of followed suit. Potsdam in Germany like it was east Berlin so it got um Z Arch and made it very modernist, very squared and that eventually post World Fall got turned back into a I think it's still it's almost finished being reclassified. Read into Yeah it's it's pretty interesting it's like there's classical architecture and classical layout which I think fundamentally works. It's hard to fault other than architects like to reinvent wheels and come up with interesting ideas. But it's like and then you've got these modernist ideas and it's like where's where's the in-between where you can fulfill the basic principles and make a city and a town a nice place that people want to be. And sometimes I wonder if Franklin Wright is the the junction between the two where he designed things that had some classical references, some modern features features overall extreme visual density and just epically beautiful and epically complex buildings.
SPEAKER_00:Although do do all roads lead to Frank not not as not as city obviously probably I mean we're not sure he's the godfather right I have a little finger puppet of him on my fridge talk to you while you're brick um about sometimes sometimes your brick your brick must be longer what length just this is an absolute segue about trying to trying to decide which dimension of brick I like the most thinner and longer traditional we're running a very traditional brick on me and Ben's project at the moment very classic brick shape.
SPEAKER_01:How are you finding that's nice we're adding in trying trying to bring in some of that visual complexity we keep preaching about while I keep preaching about it are you is it red brick?
SPEAKER_00:No cream sand sand brick I was actually surprised at how affordable brick is cheaper than timber clad in if you're gonna do a stained vertical shiplap it's way cheaper than that and install rate yeah how much more expensive than cargo so the number I got I was chatting to a QS I just I was just like can you just give me some ballpark figures just out of interest and it was like about 240 a square install for steel 350 to 450 a square install for brick and that spectrum is based on whether you go for a standard brick or something a little bit more funky. And then 550 a square meter for a Bodo I was just like give me a Bodo as a comparison which is interesting. So there you go a little oyster for that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah sometimes we put too much Farrogate on buildings on the first guy to put corrigate on buildings.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah it's not it is nice though and you know it has many benefits.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah yeah I I think we'll maybe we're taught taught to be seduced by cheap materials.
SPEAKER_00:I'd argue that corrigate is the one true post-colonial anyway Kiwi vernacular.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah well I think that's the the conclusion of the conversation isn't it's the classic style I think works really well in Europe but it's if you if you're trying to make an authentic it's not gonna happen space of New Zealand like what is what is our like interesting but still beautiful vernacular New Zealand? Is it Arrowtown?
SPEAKER_00:I was about to say Arrowtown like Corrugate bit after little um galve development as you come it's off to the left yeah yeah that one's cool I I like that place.
SPEAKER_01:Could you imagine like bringing some of that could you use corrugate in like multi-story buildings in like a real interesting way?
SPEAKER_00:In the middle of a city yeah like a New Zealand I think any any New Zealand any planning department will have a field day with you to be honest but I like the idea. Well I think windows glass sucks sometimes like too many buildings are just curtain walls of glass yeah maybe that's why classical civic buildings are more interesting because there's clearly just more to look at Crosson is it Cross and do have done really interesting stuff with like laser cutting corrugate creating screens out of it and like adding adding to adding to the material with a like s you know more texture. Yeah I think I've I've I've done a couple of buildings that have done that it's really cool.
SPEAKER_01:Um New York as we speak and give me a picture of this building that had like real naily sort of almost art louveau aluminium screen along the ground floor and they had sort of post or like ornate detailing but it was actually glass like real complex glass detailing it was a Hurt Song to be on building. Which we found out afterwards. Yeah just like the on the face of it you're like oh that's a glass building but then you take a second look and you're like holy shit there's there's a lot going on there.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Double skin facade with this glass beam like and then this crazy cast aluminium sort of facade screen fence gate.
SPEAKER_00:That's why they're one of the best better than the rest.
SPEAKER_01:Better than the rest. Hertzlog is we could do a conversation on Hertz loger itself because I think that Scandinavia Scandinavian sort of big timber post and beam building type of it's so interesting maybe tying into your mass timber ideal. Yeah that style of multi-story building can be pretty exciting. Coupled with some galve some galve corrigate in there and some windows in the centre city it's not allowed to do galve in so many places it's so disappointing. Well you're often allowed to do it people just don't give warranties for it.
SPEAKER_00:Well it's well it's that you can't put it by the C and but I'd say the majority of land covenants I've read won't let you use it.
SPEAKER_01:We have a shitload of that don't they?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah land of covenants of covenants the LRV index is never got covenants it's actually not that everyone goes on about bangs on about how bad it is it's not that bad. Little design review boards well we designed a we designed a building in Hanley's farm that's hopefully going on site in November and the clients were like oh screw the like here's the design guide but you know ultimately just do what you want the design guide's so boringly prescriptive for Hanley's farm. So we just designed a cool build well I think it's a cool building and it went through the design review panel and we got the report back passed got through got the report back and I think there were 13 areas of like 20 of noncompliance and I was just like because I was reading the report and I was like oh my god I'm gonna have to change everything. And then at the bottom it just had a statement that was just like architectural merit outweighs all noncompliance and that was it. And I was like sorry it isn't that hard people just think it think that it is therefore don't actually try and push the barrier. Like just do it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah well that's my one of my giant pet peefs when people don't even attempt to push the barrier.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Don't know until you find out exactly people having having a hellish time with design review boards.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah I mean like maybe we got lucky but yeah No mate you're just an excellent architect thank you thank thank you thank you Gerard.
SPEAKER_01:I saw you win another award yesterday yeah German one.
SPEAKER_00:That's fun give me a list of where all these awards are gotta start applying for I think the thing is like you you get one international nod and then they just all kind of keep coming just sort of I can do just reply to the emails to the of Hashtag there's a lot of fishing ones a lot of ones that are Some are so expensive now.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah this one was expensive but I had one ring me and I'll it was like 500 five oh 416 to apply to submit.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah but they were clean they were like I don't know maybe just a good sales department that they actually ring architects all around the world yeah yeah so was it the um yeah we got rang uh rang the other day but I think it was the DNA awards or something in Paris. They were ringing they were ringing around. Makes you what makes you wonder if they're legit. And then you kind of like search and you're like oh that's pretty legit but also yeah it's a lot of money gives my money yeah that's why design's great because it's like a hundred pound and it's uh yeah yeah I'm allergic to paying for things cool yeah man that's a good check it was a pretty good check
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