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Karangahape Road

Auckland CBDRed-light districts in New ZealandStreets in AucklandTourist attractions in AucklandUse New Zealand English from July 2022
Auckland Karangahape Road
Auckland Karangahape Road

Karangahape Road (commonly known as K' Road) is one of the main streets in the central business district (CBD) of Auckland, New Zealand. The massive expansion of motorways through the nearby inner city area – and subsequent flight of residents and retail into the suburbs from the 1960s onwards – turned it from one of Auckland's premier shopping streets into a marginal area with the reputation of a red light district. Now considered to be one of the cultural centres of Auckland, since the 1980s–1990s it has been undergoing a slow process of gentrification, and is now known for off-beat cafes and boutique shops. It runs west–east along a ridge at the southern edge of the Auckland CBD, perpendicular to Queen Street, the city's main street. At its intersection with Ponsonby Road in the west, Karangahape Road becomes Great North Road, at its eastern end it connects to Grafton Bridge.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Karangahape Road (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Karangahape Road
Karangahape Road, Auckland Newton

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Wikipedia: Karangahape RoadContinue reading on Wikipedia

Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N -36.8577935 ° E 174.7597039 °
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Address

Cross Street Arcade

Karangahape Road 214
1010 Auckland, Newton
Auckland, New Zealand
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Auckland Karangahape Road
Auckland Karangahape Road
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Ironbank (Auckland)
Ironbank (Auckland)

Ironbank is a 4,500-m2, six-level mixed-used (retail and office) development on Karangahape Road, Auckland city centre, New Zealand. The building also provides a mechanical, automated car stacker for 96 cars, which the robotic system racks in a four-level storage wall. It also used a variety of environmentally friendly building facilities, such as reduced energy demands due to a design that can dispense with air conditioning.The seven-storey building has both been criticised and lauded for looking like "rusting containers", and an architecture critic noted it reminded him of "kindergarten day in a shipping yard", calling it the "most complex and adventurous building" of RTA Studio (designed for Samson Corporation). The building is hoped to achieve 5-star Green Building certification.In 2009, it received three architecture awards, in the "commercial", "sustainable" and "urban design" categories of the New Zealand Institute of Architects Auckland awards sponsored by the paint company Resene. It then captured second place at the World Architecture Festival, a European award, making it the best-scoring New Zealand entrant ever at the festival, and being praised for "Its sophisticated attitude to the messy urbanity of south-central Auckland".It was also mentioned in a The New Zealand Herald series where prominent Aucklanders nominated outstanding Auckland buildings constructed since 2000. Urban designer Ludo Campbell-Reid specifically noted that the building was greater than the sum of its parts, that it would help re-invigorate Karangahape Road and its backstreets, and that unlike most buildings, it looked better from the back than from the front side.

Musical Electronics Library
Musical Electronics Library

The Musical Electronics Library (or MEL) is a lending library of homemade electronic musical devices in Auckland and Wellington, New Zealand, and is a worldwide leader in the Scavengetronica movement.The library contains electrolytic capacitors, rampwave oscillators, white noise generators, light theremins, sample and holds, ring modulators, preamplifiers, pitch shifters, phasers, and mixers; mostly built inside repurposed VHS cases. Highlights of the collection include the "electric bee motorcycle sound-maker box", a device which emulates the sound of meowing cats inside a Cats VHS box, and "Mad Max" which has been described as "Merzbow in a box".MEL is run by volunteers and curated by musician and device-builder Kraus. The library was inspired by the work of Nicolas Collins and Bob Widlar. Musicians using equipment from MEL include Hermione Johnson, Kraus, Pumice, Diana Tribute, Samuel Flynn Scott, the MEL Orchestra, Piece War, Ducklingmonster, the Biscuits, Powernap, Herriot Row, and Chronic Fatigue Sindrome.The library has been running synthesizer-building workshops around New Zealand. MEL also co-hosts an open weekly maker night with the Auckland University of Technology where projects are developed in a collaborative environment.Kraus stated in a New Zealand Listener interview that "doing any kind of community project like this for me is a political thing - of self-organisation and encouraging people to take control of their lives, instead of just being a consumer, buying something someone else has made, or some robots in China. The kind of empowerment that comes from learning a new skill is a really powerful thing." He said in NZ musician magazine that he wants "to emphasise the idea of sharing and also reducing waste through re-using things and giving seemingly broken or out of date things a new purpose."The library started in Auckland and 2014 and opened a Wellington chapter in 2016.