Transcript of Aaron Lewis's earthquake story, captured by the UC QuakeBox project.
In the wake of the Canterbury earthquakes, one of the biggest threats to our heritage buildings is the risk of earthquakes and the associated drive to strengthen or demolish buildings. Can Small Town NZ balance the requirements of the EQPB legislation and economic realities of their places? The government’s priority is on safety of building occupants and citizens in the streets. However, maintaining and strengthening privately-owned heritage buildings is often cost prohibitive. Hence, heritage regulation has frequently been perceived as interfering with private property rights, especially when heritage buildings occupy a special place in the community becoming an important place for people (i.e. public benefits are larger than private). We investigate several case studies where building owners have been given green light to demolish heritage listed buildings to make way for modern developments. In two of the case studies developers provided evidence of unaffordable strengthening costs. A new trend that has emerged is a voluntary offer of contributing to an incentive fund to assist with heritage preservation of other buildings. This is a unique example where private owners offer incentives (via council controlled organisations) instead of it being purely the domain of the central or local governments.
Canterbury Earthquake 04/09/10 Christchurch New Zealand
A photograph of a chalked message on the side of a building in New Brighton. The message reads, "Cantabrians will prevail. Kia kaha!".
A PDF copy of The Star newspaper, published on Wednesday 17 August 2011.
This thesis describes the strategies for earthquake strengthening vintage clay bricks unreinforced masonry (URM) buildings. URM buildings are well known to be vulnerable to damage from earthquake-induced lateral forces that may result in partial or full building collapse. The 2010/2011 Canterbury earthquakes are the most recent destructive natural disaster that resulted in the deaths of 185 people. The earthquake events had drawn people’s attention when URM failure and collapse caused about 39 of the fatality. Despite the poor performance of URM buildings during the 2010/2011 Canterbury earthquakes, a number of successful case study buildings were identified and their details research in-depth. In order to discover the successful seismic retrofitting techniques, two case studies of retrofitted historical buildings located in Christchurch, New Zealand i.e. Orion’s URM substations and an iconic Heritage Hotel (aka Old Government Building) was conducted by investigating and evaluating the earthquake performance of the seismic retrofitting technique applied on the buildings prior to the 2010/2011 Canterbury earthquakes and their performance after the earthquakes sequence. The second part of the research reported in this thesis was directed with the primary aim of developing a cost-effective seismic retrofitting technique with minimal interference to the vintage clay-bricks URM buildings. Two retrofitting techniques, (i) near-surface mounted steel wire rope (NSM-SWR) with further investigation on URM wallettes to get deeper understanding the URM in-plane behaviour, and (ii) FRP anchor are reported in this research thesis.
Two women outside the new Calendar Girls building on Hereford Street. Wire fencing and road cones are still blocking part of the road.
A boy playing one of Gap Filler's painted pianos. This has been placed on the site of a demolished building in New Brighton.
Case study unreinforced masonry (URM) buildings that were seismically retrofitted prior to the 2010/11 Canterbury earthquake sequence and exhibited successful performance during these earthquakes are presented herein. Selected buildings were divided into the following categories based on size and complexity: (1) simple, single storey box type buildings (i.e. electrical substations), (2) common and simple commercial buildings, and (3) large and complex clay brick and stone URM buildings. The retrofitted case study URM buildings were evaluated based on overall structural seismic performance as well as the categories of initial seismic design, heritage preservation, architectural appeal, and cost. Detailed observations of 4 representative case study buildings and a summary of findings are reported herein. http://db.nzsee.org.nz/2017/Orals.htm
A pdf copy of a presentation delivered at Building a Better New Zealand (BBNZ 2014) Conference. The presentation examines the relationship between innovation and productivity improvement in the construction industry.
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Looking across the quad towards the new staff room at Avonside Girls High School".
The quality of multi-owned residential buildings and the capability to maintain that quality into the future is important in preserving not only the monetary value of such housing (Lujanen, 2010) but also the quality of life for its residents. The aim of this paper is to examine the governance and decision-making rules and regulations as they relate to the undertaking of major repairs in multi-owned residential buildings in Finland and New Zealand with particular regard to the Finnish Limited Liability Housing Companies Act 2010 (LLHCA 2010) and the New Zealand Unit Titles Act 2010 (UTA 2010). Currently, major building repairs are topical issues in both countries; in Finland as a result of ageing buildings requiring major re-fitting of pipes and other infrastructure, and in New Zealand as a result of earthquake damage in Christchurch and Leaky Building Syndrome nationwide. Major repairs can be a significant financial burden to unit owners and collective decisions can be difficult to achieve. Interestingly, new legislation that governs multi-owned housing was enacted in both countries in 2010. The recent enactment of this legislation provides an opportunity to examine the UTA 2010 and LLHCA 2010 with regard to how they address major repairs, improvements in housing stock and the financing possibilities associated with these undertakings. More specifically this paper explores housing intensification (i.e. building up, out or alongside existing multi-owned residential buildings on commonly owned land) as a means of financing major repairs. The comparison of governance and decision-making in two different shared ownership systems with different histories and cultural contexts provides a chance to explore the possibilities and challenges that each country faces, and the potential to learn from each other’s practices and develop these further. In this regard the findings from this paper contribute to the academic literature (Bugden 2005; Easthope & Randolph 2009; Dupuis & Dixon 2010; Lujanen 2010; Easthope, Hudson & Randolph 2013) concerning to the governance of multi-owned housing as it relates to intensive housing development and its wider social and economic implications.
A photograph of street art on the side of a building in Brighton Mall.
Canterbury Provincial Council and Supreme Court Buildings, Durham Street North.
Canterbury Provincial Council and Supreme Court Buildings, Durham Street North.
An aerial photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Colombo Street beginning at the Copthorne on the left and ending just past the Christchurch Cathedral".
A photograph of a partially-constructed building. The photograph is captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Rebuilding, Salisbury Street".
St Germain restaurant on Worcester Street. Metal bracing has been constructed under the building's verandah but the restaurant remains open.
A photograph of members of the Dog Section of the New Zealand Police at the site of an earthquake-damaged building in central Christchurch.
A photograph of street art on a building outside Harrington's Beer Wine and Spirits in New Brighton. The artwork depicts scenes from Doctor Who.
A digital copy of a painting by Julia Holden. The painting is of buildings on the corner of Gloucester Street and New Regent Street.
An aerial photograph of the Christ Church Cathedral in Cathedral Square.
A photograph of chalked messages on the side of a building in New Brighton. The messages read, "We are tough, eh." and, "Hug each other".
A photograph of a chalked message on the side of a building in New Brighton. The message reads, "From here, it can only get better".
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "New Cashel Mall centre left".
A photograph looking south out a window of the PricewaterhouseCoopers Building. Notable landmarks include: New Regent Street and the Rendezvous Hotel on the left side of the photograph; the Novotel in the centre; the Lyttelton Times building to the right; and the Hotel Grand Chancellor in the background.
Following the Christchurch earthquake of 22 February 2011 a number of researchers were sent to Christchurch, New Zealand to document the damage to masonry buildings as part of “Project Masonry”. Coordinated by the Universities of Auckland and Adelaide, researchers came from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Italy, Portugal and the US. The types of masonry investigated were unreinforced clay brick masonry, unreinforced stone masonry, reinforced concrete masonry, residential masonry veneer and churches; masonry infill was not part of this study. This paper focuses on the progress of the unreinforced masonry (URM) component of Project Masonry. To date the research team has completed raw data collection on over 600 URM buildings in the Christchurch area. The results from this study will be extremely relevant to Australian cities since URM buildings in New Zealand are similar to those in Australia.
Personnel from the USAID Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) outside a collapsed building on Cashel Street.
A crane parked outside the Forsyth Barr Building on the corner of Colombo and Armagh Streets.
Students from Avonside Girls High School eating lunch outside their temporary library building, built since the earthquake. The photograph has been captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "The new buildings are low and brightly painted in strong colours. The mood is similar to the Container Mall Re:Start, with bright colours, low ceilings, and a spacious layout".