A dislodged boulder from the cliffs behind Sumner Returned Services' Association car park. The bolder fell from the cliff during the 22 February 2011 earthquake, crushing the local substation and burying several cars.
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "The west wall of the Christ Church Cathedral where the rose window fell during the 23 December 2011 earthquake. Steel bracing has been used to hold up the front of the church".
Damage to the bell tower of St John's Church on Hereford Street. The stones have crumbled, exposing the inside of the tower. They are still lying where they fell. Damage can also be seen on the roof.
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "The west wall of the Christ Church Cathedral where the rose window fell during the 23 December 2011 earthquake. Steel bracing has been used to hold up the front of the church".
St John's Anglican Church in Hororata with a broken bell tower. Unfortunately the top fell through the church roof. A high fence topped with barbed wire has since been erected to keep the souvenir hunters away.
The collapsed chimney of a property on Robson Avenue in Avonside. It has fallen on to the property's front lawn as a result of the 4 September 2010 earthquake, and the section of roof it fell from has been weather proofed with a red tarpaulin.
The collapsed chimney of a property on Robson Avenue in Avonside. It has fallen on to the property's front lawn as a result of the 4 September 2010 earthquake, and the section of roof it fell from has been weather proofed with a red tarpaulin.
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "The west wall of the Christ Church Cathedral where the rose window fell during the 23 December 2011 earthquake. Steel bracing has been used to hold up the front of the church".
The collapsed chimney of a property on Robson Avenue in Avonside. It has fallen on to the property's front lawn as a result of the 4 September 2010 earthquake, and the roof it fell from has been weather proofed with a red tarpaulin.
A collapsed brick wall on Halswell Junction Road. A stack of bricks have been saved by the tree which has grown in a curve and is resting on the wall, holding the bricks in place. A pile of bricks can be seen on the ground where they fell.
A photograph submitted by Philip Broderick Willis to the QuakeStories website. The description reads, "Our living room on Feb 22. Our son Ian was eating his lunch – which you can see the TV fell down on top of. We are so lucky he wasn’t sitting just a little closer.".
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "The Heathcote Valley entrance to the Bridal Track to Lyttelton was closed for a year because of the danger of falling rocks. It opened on the morning of December 23. The earthquake at lunchtime then closed it again when more rocks fell".
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "The Heathcote Valley entrance to the Bridle Track to Lyttelton was closed for a year because of the danger of falling rocks. It opened on the morning of December 23. The earthquake at lunchtime then closed it again when more rocks fell".
A weather-damaged Chinese lantern fallen to the ground in Victoria Square. The Chinese New Year Lantern Festival was to be held on Saturday 26 February and Sunday 27 February 2011 but was cancelled due to the earthquake. The lanterns hung in Victoria Square until they fell.
A photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "The Octagon Live Restaurant, formerly Trinity Congregational Church, on the corner of Manchester and Worcester Street. This was further damaged in the 23 December 2011 earthquake when a big piece of the rose window fell out".
Damage to a residential property in Richmond. The brick wall of the garage has collapse inward, and the roof fallen in on top of it. The driveway is badly cracked and buckled. The photographer comments, "These photos show our old house in River Rd. The brick garage just collapsed, pulling the gate over as it fell".
A damaged building on Cashel Street near Oxford Terrace. The top of the facade has fallen off the building into the street below, taking the awning with it. Bricks from the building still lie on the footpath where they fell. Above, the windows have been braced with plywood. Wire fencing has been placed around the building as a cordon.
The stump of an oak tree in the Halswell Primary School grounds. The oak tree had the be cut down after it broke during the earthquake and was hanging at a angle. The person who cut down the tree has carved "1870 - 16:9:2010" into the stump, the year that the tree was planted, and then the day that it broke and fell.
The northern side of the Christ Church Cathedral with the cafe and store in the foreground. Shipping containers have been placed around the eastern side of the Cathedral to protect the road from falling debris. Wire fencing has also been placed around the building as a cordon. To the right, the damaged and party deconstructed tower can be seen with the missing spire which fell during the 22 February 2011 earthquake.
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.