I K Brunel’s masterpiece
It was a late autumn day in 1973. We had just left Plymouth and turned a corner on the A38. There it was branded...
France’s Palais du Louvre
Among its riches it houses Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, as well as many choice items looted by Napoleon during his years of conquest in...
Kunsthaus Graz
In 2003 the Austrian city of Graz, sited on the Mur River, was designated European Capital of Culture. The honour lasts one calendar year...
Hadrian’s defining wall
The recent celebrations marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall recall that using physical barriers to mark political borders ain’t...
99 Quay Street, Auckland, turns 100
In the hurly burly that has cluttered our year to date, including the teething pains of a Super City, sundry occupations of assorted CBDs,...
Raurimu’s twisting spiral
The date: 1898. The problem: How to achieve a workable climb for New Zealand’s main trunk line from Taumarunui to the summit at National...
Wairakei celebrates 50 years
In the 1950s New Zealand was desperate for electrical energy. A succession of droughts had found the country’s much vaunted hydro-electric generation capacity wanting....
M. Eiffel’s Eyesore
In 1887 Gustave Eiffel got the nod from the Paris authorities to begin construction of his tower. It was intended as no more than...
Christchurch salutes the Deans
AMI Stadium is the latest incarnation of what was once Lancaster Park that began life in 1880 under the auspices of the Canterbury Cricket...
The colossus of Leshan
While watching a documentary called Rediscovering the Yangtze, I found — as a geologist in a former incarnation — the geomorphology mind blowing. There...