Susannah’s conference began in earnest today. She presented a workshop on the Design Signatures research she has been doing in collaboration with a group of U.S. researchers. Participants were enthusiastic, generated a good discussion, and gave positive feedback afterwards. With this out of the way, the rest of the conference is smooth sailing.

Nick helped with logistics during Susannah’s presentation, then took advantage of the location at the University of Canterbury and spent part of the afternoon meeting with a professor in the computer science department who has similar (but not identical) research interests. Susannah and Nick met up in the evening to explore some of the restaurants in the neighborhood, and ended up getting peri-peri chicken at Nando’s. Although this is apparently an international chain, we’ve never seen one before and found the food quite delicious. And they had a roasted broccoli side dish — try finding that at your neighborhood McDonalds! For dessert, we sampled the “chewable good yogurt” at Hey! I Am Yogost. The one we tried was basically a combination of mango lassi with rice pudding, if you can imagine that — not surprisingly, Susannah loved it.

Not far from us is a small park called the Riccarton House & Bush. This was the site of the first European settler’s house in the area, and features a small patch of dense old-growth forest that shows what grew here before humans cut or burned everything else down. A small stream winds past the site, which is quite lovely, and they also have a small flower garden.

We haven’t yet commented on the New Zealand architecture. Christchurch is mostly low one- or two-story buildings, often one very small lots or combined into little condo developments with small walled gardens/yards. The newer buildings tend towards a certain architectural style: intersecting masses clad in glass, stone, cedar, and corrugated steel, and very little in the way of decorative ornaments. Older buildings here borrow from English cottage vernacular, with more frills. The combination of the two styles is quite interesting.