This time round two of the buildings were the Solid Energy Building at Show Place and the soon to be demolished IRD building in the Red Zone (Christchurch CBD).

The waterfront’s changed a lot in the 7 years we’ve been living overseas. There are several new fantastically designed commercial buildings along with some new restaurants & bars.

However there are also some little design quirks that really have no other place than in Wellington. The toilet below for instance… Designed by Bret Thurston of Studio Pacific Architecture.

Below is the New Press Building in Christchurch’s CBD. It was really quite strange being within the ‘Red Zone’ well after the event. Especially since I’ve not really experienced any of it. Going in so long after the quake made it very hard to get a sense of the destruction that occurred, mainly due to the fact that so much of the demolition has already occurred. There is still plenty going on and there is still the odd building that hasn’t been touched, but it’s very empty both in what you see and how you feel.

Also in Christchurch is NZi3 – New Zealand ICT Innovation Institute @ the University of Canterbury.

I’ve also updated the Architecture page on the main sight with some of the new work.

It’s been a while since my last post… but for good reason. We’ve moved back to New Zealand! For a whole bunch of reasons my wife and I decided some time back that a move back was a long time coming. Once the decision was made it was just a matter of packing up and moving over… sounds easy right… NOT!! :p

Easy – No. Done – Yes :)

So in light of that I figured that a Re:START post was well suited : )

What a fantastic idea this place is! They say it’s a temporary mall, but personally I think they should keep in running for good. It’s an excellent repurposing of the containers and the stores are niche and funky to suit the place.

It still doesn’t seem to have taken off in Melbourne…. plenty of apartment buildings, new office buildings and shops, but barely a person to be seen.

Anyway, I found a couple of buildings I liked with an interesting facades, so walked around them looking for some interesting angles to capture.

In keeping with the dark moody day its been today I’ve processed these as black and white, added some noise and punched in a bit of contrast.

After we returned from holiday I decided that the other project that I had in mind wasn’t going to come together in time so would need to be shelved in favor of this.

The first step was to scout some locations via Google maps. I’d decided that at first it would be easiest to use car park buildings with rooftop access. On top of this I’ve been lucky enough to work in one of the many towers in the CBD and was able to gain access to the 32nd floor rooftop.

Now that I had my targets in mind the next step was to actually get out and shoot.

I’ve been quite pleased with the results in the short time I’ve been shooting, and am quite sure that this will be something that I will slowly continue shooting as time goes on.

I’ve also update the main portfolio on this site to include these images so check out michaelvalli.com/urbanrooftops