j-blog

Recently Lake Maquarie City Council (Australia) made their Development Application form 8 pages plus a five 5 page checklist instead of 2 pages.

Recently on a job a plumber subcontracted to the Builder only read the engineer's drawings and did not read the architectural drawings.

Recently I have been having an issue with Levels with Maitland City Council Planners.

Though it was not written in any DCP that was available when I designed the project, the decree seemed to come from on high that no retaining wall should be over 1m. Now, that is a garden wall, you can buy them off-the-shelf. Don't even need an engineer.

They say that two wrongs do not make a right. However, in mathematics and architecture, two errors may cancel each other out.

Recently architects have observed a trend of Council planners forcing design changes for aesthetic reasons. To force a change to a design may have complex implications.

John Andrews of Lake Macquarie City Council once asked me in a Developement Unit meeting if I agreed that it was better to design on a larger site. The following is the letter I sent to him explaining the issues from a designers point of view.

Exploding the myth that things architects design are expensive.

My experience is redefining my image of an architect.

Underlying some engineering decisions that seem far removed from aesthetics there are actually rules based on conventional 'normative' aesthetic preferences. The following reports an instance where, by accident, it was discovered that the aesthetic preference of the Council civil engineer had produced a DCP 'rule' that could prevent innovative solutions.

The case of the missing trees. How Council wrote I had been remiss, but it turned out Council had jumped to conclusions.