A natural disaster will inevitably strike New Zealand in the coming years, damaging educational facilities. Delays in building quality replacement facilities will lead to short-term disruption of education, risking long-term inequalities for the affected students. The Christchurch earthquake demonstrated the issues arising from a lack of school planning and support. This research proposes a system that can effectively provide rapid, prefabricated, primary schools in post-disaster environments. The aim is to continue education for children in the short term, while using construction that is suitable until the total replacement of the given school is completed. The expandable prefabricated architecture meets the strength, time, and transport requirements to deliver a robust, rapid relief temporary construction. It is also adaptable to any area within New Zealand. This design solution supports personal well-being and mitigates the risk of educational gaps, PTSD linked with anxiety and depression, and many other mental health disorders that can impact students and teachers after a natural disaster.
On the 22nd of February, 2011 the city of Christchurch, New Zealand was crippled by a colossal earthquake. 185 people were killed, thousands injured and what remained was a city left in destruction and ruin. Thousands of Christchurch properties and buildings were left damaged beyond repair and the rich historical architecture of the Canterbury region had suffered irreparably. This research will conduct an investigation into whether the use of mixed reality can aid in liberating Christchurch’s rich architectural heritage when applied to the context of destructed buildings within Christchurch. The aim of this thesis is to formulate a narrative around the embodiment of mixed reality when subjected to the fragmentary historical architecture of Christchurch. Mixed reality will aspire to act as the defining ligature that holds the past, present and future of Christchurch’s architectural heritage intact as if it is all part of the same continuum. This thesis will focus on the design of a memorial museum within a heavily damaged historical trust registered building due to the Christchurch earthquake. It is important and relevant to conceive the idea of such a design as history is what makes everything we know. The memories of the past, the being of the now and the projection of the future is the basis and fundamental imperative in honouring the city and people of Christchurch. Using the technologies of Mixed Reality and the realm of its counter parts the memorial museum will be a definitive proposition of desire in providing a psychological and physical understanding towards a better Christchurch, for the people of Christchurch. This thesis serves to explore the renovation possibilities of the Canterbury provincial council building in its destructed state to produce a memorial museum for the Christchurch earthquake. The design seeks to mummify the building in its raw state that sets and develops the narrative through the spaces. The design intervention is kept at a required minimum and in doing so manifests a concentrated eloquence to the derelict space. The interior architecture unlocks the expression of history and time encompassed within a destructive and industrialised architectural dialogue. History is the inhabitant of the building, and using the physical and virtual worlds it can be set free. This thesis informs a design for a museum in central Christchurch that celebrates and informs the public on past, present and future heritage aspects of Christchurch city. Using mixed reality technologies the spatial layout inside will be a direct effect of the mixed reality used and the exploration of the physical and digital heritage aspects of Christchurch. The use of technology in today’s world is so prevalent that incorporating it into a memorial museum for Christchurch would not only be interesting and exploratory but also offer a sense of pushing forward and striving beyond for a newer, fresher Christchurch. The memorial museum will showcase a range of different exhibitions that formulate around the devastating Christchurch earthquake. Using mixed reality technologies these exhibitions will dictate the spaces inside dependant on their various applications of mixed reality as a technology for architecture. Research will include; what the people of Canterbury are most dear to in regards to Christchurch’s historical environment; the use of mixed reality to visualise digital heritage, and the combination of the physical and digital to serve as an architectural mediation between what was, what is and what there could be.
The suburb of New Brighton in Christchurch Aotearoa was once a booming retail sector until the end of its exclusivity to Saturday shopping in 1980 and the aftermath of the devastating 2011 Christchurch earthquake. The suburb of New Brighton was hit particularly hard and fell into economic collapse, partly brought on by the nature of its economic structure. This implosion created an urban crisis where people and businesses abandoned the suburb and its once-booming commercial economy. As a result, New Brighton has been left with the residue of abandoned infrastructure and commercial propaganda such as billboards, ATM machines, commercial facades, and shopping trolleys that as abandoned fragments, no longer contribute to culture, society and the economy. This design-led research investigation proposes to repurpose the broken objects that were left behind. By strategically selecting objects that are symbols of the root cause of the economic devastation, the repurposed and re-contextualised fragments will seek to allegorically expose the city’s destructive economic narrative, while providing a renewed sense of place identity for the people. This design-led thesis investigation argues that the seemingly innocuous icons of commercial industry, such as billboards, ATM machines, commercial facades, and shopping trolleys, are intended to act as lures to encourage people to spend money; ultimately, these urban and architectural lures can contribute to economic devastation. The aim of this investigation is to repurpose abandoned fragments of capitalist infrastructure in ways that can help to unveil new possibilities for a disrupted community and enhance their awareness of what led to the urban disruption. The thesis proposes to achieve this research aim by exploring three principal research objectives: 1) to assimilate and re-contextualise disconnected urban fragments into new architectural interventions; 2) to anthropomorphise these new interventions so that they are recognisable as architectural ‘inhabitants’, the storytellers of the urban context; and 3) to curate these new architectural interventions in ways that enable a community-scale allegorical and didactic experience to be recognised.
Disasters are a critical topic for practitioners of landscape architecture. A
fundamental role of the profession is disaster prevention or mitigation
through practitioners having a thorough understanding of known threats. Once we reach the ‘other side’ of a disaster – the aftermath – landscape architecture plays a central response in dealing with its consequences, rebuilding of settlements and infrastructure and gaining an enhanced understanding of the causes of any failures. Landscape architecture must respond not only to the physical dimensions of disaster landscapes but also to the social, psychological and spiritual aspects. Landscape’s experiential potency is heightened in disasters in ways that may challenge and extend the spectrum of emotions. Identity is rooted in landscape, and massive transformation through the impact of a disaster can lead to ongoing psychological devastation. Memory and landscape are tightly
intertwined as part of individual and collective identities, as connections to place and time. The ruptures caused by disasters present a challenge to remembering the lives lost and the prior condition of the landscape, the intimate attachments to places now gone and even the event itself.
Memorial design in the West has been explored in depth (Stevens and Franck, 2016; Williams, 2007), and for landscape architects it presents opportunities and challenges. However, there is little in the English language literature about memorial design in China. How have Chinese designers responded to the commemorative settings of war and disaster? This study will adopt the method of case study to analyse two of the most representative memorials in China: Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall (war) and Tangshan Earthquake Memorial Hall (disaster). Both landscapes have undergone three or four renovations and extensions in the last four decades, demonstrating the practical effects of the Chinese landscape theory. These examples of responses to trauma through memorial landscape interventions are testimonies to the witnesses, victims, abusers, ordinary people, youth and the place where the tragedy took place. This study will explore the reconstruction and expansion of the two memorials under the background of China's policies on memorial landscapes in different periods, as well as their functions of each stage. The research will examine how existing Chinese memorial theories exhibit unique responses at different times in response to the sadness and needs experienced by different users.
Key Words：memorial landscape; memorial language; victims; descriptive; architecture; experence; disaster; memorial hall; landscape development; Chinese memorial; war.
Imagined landscapes find their form in utopian dreaming. As ideal places, utopias are set up according to the ideals of their designers. Inevitably, utopias become compromised when they move from the imaginary into the actual. Opportunities to create utopias rely largely on a blank slate, a landscape unimpeded by the inconveniences of existing occupation – or even topography. Christchurch has seen two utopian moments. The first was at the time of European settlement in the mid-nineteenth century, when imported ideals provided a model for a new city. The earthquakes of 2010 and 2011 provided a second point at which utopian dreaming spurred visions for the city. Christchurch’s earthquakes have provided a unique opportunity for a city to re-imagine itself. Yet, as is the fate for all imaginary places, reality got in the way.
The increase in urban population has required cities to rethink their strategies for minimising greenhouse gas impacts and adapting to climate change. While urban design and planning policy have been guided by principles such as walkability (to reduce the dependence on cars) and green infrastructure (to enhance the quality of open spaces to support conservation and human values), there have been conflicting views on what spatial strategies will best prepare cities for a challenging future. Researchers supporting compact cities based upon public Transit Oriented Development have claimed that walkability, higher density and mixed-uses make cities more sustainable (Owen, 2009) and that, while green spaces in cities are necessary, they are dull in comparison with shopfronts and street vendors (Speck, 2012, p 250). Other researchers claim that green infrastructure is fundamental to improving urban sustainability and attracting public space users with improved urban comfort, consequently encouraging walkability (Pitman and Ely, 2013). Landscape architects tend to assume that ‘the greener the better’; however, the efficiency of urban greenery in relation to urban comfort and urbanity depends on its density, distribution and the services provided. Green infrastructure can take many forms (from urban forests to street trees) and provide varied services (amended microclimate, aesthetics, ecology and so forth). In this paper, we evaluate the relevance of current policy in Christchurch regarding both best practice in green infrastructure and urban comfort (Tavares, 2015). We focus on the Christchurch Blueprint for rebuilding the central city, and critically examine the post-earthquake paths the city is following regarding its green and grey infrastructures and the resulting urban environment. We discuss the performance and appropriateness of the current Blueprint in post-earthquake Christchurch, particularly as it relates to the challenges that climate change is creating for cities worldwide.
Prior to the devastating 2010 and 2011 earthquakes, parts of the CBD of Christchurch, New Zealand were undergoing revitalisation incorporating aspects of adaptive reuse and gentrification. Such areas were often characterised by a variety of bars, restaurants, and retail outlets of an “alternative” or “bohemian” style. These early 20th century buildings also exhibited relatively low rents and a somewhat chaotic and loosely planned property development approach by small scale developers. Almost all of these buildings were demolished following the earthquakes and a cordon placed around the CBD for several years. A paper presented at the ERES conference in 2013 presented preliminary results, from observation of post-earthquake public meetings and interviews with displaced CBD retailers. This paper highlighted a strongly held fear that the rebuild of the central city, then about to begin, would result in a very different style and cost structure from that which previously existed. As a result, permanent exclusion from the CBD of the types of businesses that previously characterised the successfully revitalised areas would occur. Five years further on, new CBD retail and office buildings have been constructed, but large areas of land between them remain vacant and the new buildings completed are often having difficulty attracting tenants. This paper reports on the further development of this long-term Christchurch case study and examines if the earlier predictions of the displaced retailers are coming true, in that a new CBD that largely mimics a suburban mall in style and tenancy mix, inherently loses some of its competitive advantage?
Unreinforced masonry churches in New Zealand, similarly to everywhere else in the word have proven to be highly vulnerable to earthquakes, because of their particular construction features. The Canterbury (New Zealand) earthquake sequence, 2010-2011 caused an invaluable loss of local architectural heritage and of churches, as regrettably, some of them were demolished instead of being repaired. It is critical for New Zealand to advance the data collection, research and understanding pertaining to the seismic performance and protection of church buildings, with the aim to:
Overview of SeisFinder SeisFinder is an open-source web service developed by QuakeCoRE and the University of Canterbury, focused on enabling the extraction of output data from computationally intensive earthquake resilience calculations. Currently, SeisFinder allows users to select historical or future events and retrieve ground motion simulation outputs for requested geographical locations. This data can be used as input for other resilience calculations, such as dynamic response history analysis. SeisFinder was developed using Django, a high-level python web framework, and uses a postgreSQL database. Because our large-scale computationally-intensive numerical ground motion simulations produce big data, the actual data is stored in file systems, while the metadata is stored in the database. The basic SeisFinder architecture is shown in Figure 1.
This dissertation explores the advocacy for the Christchurch Town Hall that occurred in 2012-2015 after the Canterbury Earthquakes. It frames this advocacy as an instance of collective-action community participation in a heritage decision, and explores the types of heritage values it expressed, particularly social values. The analysis contextualises the advocacy in post-quake Christchurch, and considers its relationship with other developments in local politics, heritage advocacy, and urban activism. In doing so, this dissertation considers how collective action operates as a form of public participation, and the practical implications for understanding and recognising social value. This research draws on studies of practices that underpin social value recognition in formal heritage management. Social value is held by communities outside institutions. Engaging with communities enables institutions to explore the values of specific places, and to realise the potential of activating local connections with heritage places. Such projects can be seen as participatory practices. However, these processes require skills and resources, and may not be appropriate for all places, communities and institutions. However, literature has understudied collective action as a form of community participation in heritage management. All participation processes have nuances of communities, processes, and context, and this dissertation analyses these in one case. The research specifically asked what heritage values (especially social values) were expressed through collective action, what the relationship was with the participation processes, communities, and wider situation that produced them, and the impact on institutional rhetoric and decisions. The research analysed values expressed in representations made to council in support of the Town Hall. It also used documentary sources and interviews with key informants to analyse the advocacy and decision-making processes and their relationships with the wider context and other grassroots activities. The analysis concluded that the values expressed intertwined social and professional values. They were related to the communities and circumstance that produced them, as an advocacy campaign for a civic heritage building from a Western architectural tradition. The advocacy value arguments were one of several factors that impacted the decision. They have had a lasting impact on rhetoric around the Town Hall, as was a heritage-making practice in its own right. This dissertation makes a number of contributions to the discussion of social value and community in heritage. It suggests connections between advocacy and participation perspectives in heritage. It recommends consideration of nuances of communities, context, and place meanings when using heritage advocacy campaigns as evidence of social value. It adds to the literature on heritage advocacy, and offers a focused analysis of one of many heritage debates that occurred in post-quake Christchurch. Ultimately, it encourages practice to actively integrate social and community values and to develop self-reflexive engagement and valuation processes. Despite inherent challenges, participatory processes offer opportunities to diversify understandings of value, co-produce heritage meanings with communities, and empower citizens in democratic processes around the places they live with and love.
