A photograph of detail of the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament. The tower on the south-west corner has partly crumbled, leaving the inside space exposed. A door can be seen propped up against the interior wall.
A photograph of members of the Wellington Emergency Management Office Emergency Response Team and the New Zealand Police standing on the corner of Worcester and Barbadoes Streets. In the background several emergency response vehicles are parked on the street.
A cordon check-point at the corner of Barbadoes and Lichfield Streets. In the foreground, a sign reading "Warrant of fitness", advertising a nearby automotive shop, leans against the "Road closed" sign. Behind the cordon, a soldier sleeps on top of the cab of an army truck.
A PDF copy of pages 166-167 of the book Christchurch: The Transitional City Pt IV. The pages document the transitional project 'Think Differently Book Exchange'. Photos: Gap Filler
Damage to the south-west corner of the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament. A section of wall has collapsed, exposing the rooms within. Some of the stones have fallen onto a vehicle parked nearby. The photographer comments, "A bike ride around the CBD. Catholic Cathedral, Barbadoes St".
Damage to the north-west corner of the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament. The upper part of the corner structure has collapsed. A statue of the Virgin Mary can be seen in a window. The photographer comments, "A bike ride around the CBD. Catholic Cathedral, Barbadoes St".
A photograph of the opening of the Think Differently Book Exchange. In the centre of the photograph, two people are browsing the books in the fridge, and to the left people are sitting at a picnic table reading.
Damage to the dome of the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament. Cracking around the base of the dome shows how it has moved. In the foreground, damage to the north-west corner of the building can be seen. The photographer comments, "A bike ride around the CBD. Catholic Cathedral, Barbadoes St".
A photograph of a woman wearing overalls covered in paint. She is holding a spray-paint can in each of her hands. There is a painted wall depicting two tui behind her, with four more spray-paint cans on the ground in front of it.
A photograph submitted by Raymond Morris to the QuakeStories website. The description reads, "Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament, Barbadoes Street. The Cathedral was opened in 1905, the architect was Frank Petrie, and was designed in the Italian renaissance style as a basilica. It is not certain yet whether it will be reconstructed after the 2011 earthquakes.".
A photograph submitted by Raymond Morris to the QuakeStories website. The description reads, "The Provincial Hotel, corner Barbadoes and Cashel streets is one the buildings now missing after the 2011 earthquakes, paintings of others can be found on the artist Raymond Morris’s flickr site (http://www.flickr.com/photos/rayso180/sets/72157626939956494/)".
A PDF copy of pages 296-297 of the book Christchurch: The Transitional City Pt IV. The pages document the transitional project 'Piko Shop Site'. Photos with permission from Greening the Rubble
A PDF copy of pages 224-225 of the book Christchurch: The Transitional City Pt IV. The pages document the transitional project 'The Viva Project'. Photos provided by Lin Roberts. With permission from The Viva Project.
Damage to the front of the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament. The upper part of the corner structures have collapsed, and the cross on the roof is on a lean. A statue of the Virgin Mary can be seen in a window. The photographer comments, "A bike ride around the CBD. Catholic Cathedral, Barbadoes St".
A large crack in the concrete floor slab of a building in Barbadoes Street. The photographer comments, "This is a picture of the cracked concrete floor in a shop in the Christchurch CBD. I have a similar crack in my home, but I have not lifted the carpet to look".
A stack of wooden frames with the words "Quake makes world headlines" written on the uppermost frame. The photographer comments, "This is a sculpture at the CPIT facility in Christchurch. It is a series of squares placed over a column with writing on the squares. It is an excellent movable sculpture that conveys the Christchurch earthquake very well. The squares are placed so that they can slide over each other and even fall inside the other on one side. It is a pity that only two sides of the squares are written on".
A photograph of a painted building located on the corner of Barbadoes and Kilmore Street. The side of the building has significant damage. The paint displays an address for Piko in red and white. There is also street art depicting a bandaid, with a speech bubble pointing to it that says "You poor thing".
A pdf copy of panel 14 of Guy Frederick's 'The Space Between Words' exhibition. The panel includes text from an interview with Gerard Smythe about his experiences of the 2010 and 2011 Canterbury earthquakes. Above this is an image of Smythe sitting outside the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament.
The Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament after the dome was removed. Large cracks are visible in the walls and in the dome's supporting structure, and the facade is supported by haybales and shipping containers. The photographer comments, "The main dome of the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament became unsafe after the February Christchurch earthquake - workmen have slowly been dismantling it. Now we are just left with the cracked and twisted walls that supported the beautiful dome".
A digitally manipulated image of damaged Music Centre. The photographer comments, "The destruction caused by the demolition of the heritage buildings damaged in the Christchurch earthquakes looks similar to the scenes in London during the second world war. The building was the Catholic Cathedral College, Christchurch. It was an integrated Catholic co-educational secondary school. It was founded in 1987, but its origins go back more than a 100 years earlier. The college was an amalgamation of two schools: Sacred Heart College for girls, and Xavier College for boys".
Aerial footage of Christchurch after the 4 September 2010 earthquake. The footage shows the earthquake damage to Wizard Home Loans & Cartridge World on Riccarton Road, Harding's Chemist and Angus Donaldson Copy Service on Colombo Street, Para Rubber and Westende Jewellers on Manchester Street, The Loaded Hog on Cashel Street, St Mary & St Athanasios Church on Edgeware Road, The Daily Bagel on Victoria Street, the Laxmi Foodstore on Barbadoes Street, Television Services on Westminster Street, The Hat Shop on High Street, St Paul's Parish Church on Gayhurst Road, Sullivan Park on Galbraith Road, and Avonside Drive.
Our last guest is one half of the duo known in Christchurch as the Brilliant Bagshaws Dr Sue Bagshaw has worked in the youth health sector for 30 years. She's set up and been involved in so many organisations benefitting young people it would make your head spin. She chairs the Korowai Youth Well-Being Trust running the Youth One Stop Shop 298 Youth Health, where she runs teaching clinics and is in the process of setting up the Christchurch Youth Hub - Te Hurihanga o Rangatahi, a collaboration of health and social services and transitional housing for youth. Dr Bagshaw established the 198 youth one stop shop in 1995 and helped run it for 15 years. She's advised a network of similar organisations around the country, now known as the Network of Youth One Stop Shops. Following the Christchurch earthquakes, she brought together 16 youth organisations to form the first youth hub in Barbadoes Street in 2012. Colin: Dr Bagshaw is now Dame Susan Bagshaw. I asked her if she thinks she'll ever get used to being called Dame Susan
Heritage buildings are an important element of our urban environments, representing the hope and aspirations of a generation gone, reminding us of our achievements and our identity. When heritage buildings suffer damage, or fall into disrepair they are either met by one of two extremes; a bulldozer or painstaking repair. If the decision to conserve defeats the bulldozer, current heritage practice favours restoration into a mausoleum-type monument to yesteryear. But what if, rather than becoming a museum, these heritage buildings could live on and become a palimpsest of history? What if the damage was embraced and embodied in the repair? The Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament on Barbadoes Street, Christchurch is the case study building for this thesis. Suffering damage in the Canterbury earthquakes of 2010 and 2011, the Cathedral sits in ruin waiting for decisions to be made around how it can be retained for future generations. This thesis will propose a reconstruction for the Cathedral through the analysis of precedent examples of reconstructing damaged heritage buildings and guided by a heritage framework proposed in this thesis. The employed process will be documented as an alternative method for reconstructing other damaged heritage buildings.