The Christchurch City Council says it needs Government money to help repair its earthquake damaged heritage and character buildings.
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "154 Cashel Street - Southern Star building".
A cordoned off area in Christ's College where bricks from the heritage buildings have been removed and stacked. Scaffolding can be seen on the building in the distance and a prefab building to the right which was being used as classrooms while the buildings are still unsafe to enter.
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Press Building, Cathedral Square. Top floor collapsed during the February 22 earthquake".
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Poplar Crescent on Cambridge Terrace. This building was built in 1929 as part of the Edmonds Band Rotunda".
A photograph of a fire-damaged building in High Street. The photograph is captioned by Paul Corliss, "Tuam Street and High Street shops, CBD. By Alice's".
A photograph of a fire-damaged building in High Street. The photograph is captioned by Paul Corliss, "Tuam Street and High Street shops, CBD. By Alice's".
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.
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Old Municipal Council Chambers in Worcester Street".
A photograph of the earthquake-damaged Canterbury Provincial Council buildings on Durham Street.
Some Christchurch building owners say a bulldozer's the best option, despite the city council calling for government help to rebuild heritage buildings damaged by the earthquake.
Damage to the Kenton Chambers building. Diagonal cracking between the windows shows that the building has suffered major structural damage.
Damage to the Kenton Chambers building. Diagonal cracking between the windows shows that the building has suffered major structural damage.
After being largely shut off to the public since the earthquakes, Christchurch's iconic Arts Centre is set to reopen its Great Hall to the public tonight.
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "The construction of this window frame at Cranmer Court is clearly seen when the exterior stone has collapsed in the earthquake".
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Kenton Chambers, 190 Hereford Street - these heaps of shingle in front of the building will be spread over the street to protect the street when the building is demolished".
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.
A map showing the status of heritage buildings in Christchurch and Lyttelton.
A photograph of heritage building material stacked for preservation in Cashel Mall.
A photograph of the damaged Canterbury Provincial Council buildings supported by steel bracing and shipping containers.
The David and Goliath battle over a heritage building sitting in the way of a planned $473 million dollar, multi-use arena for Christchurch has ended up in court. The 25,000-seated, roofed arena is the final anchor project for the Christchurch rebuild and will be designed to host everything from All Blacks tests to big concerts. But sitting on the edge of the site, at 212 Madras Street, is the NG Building, a 115-year old warehouse that's home to a number of creative businesses. It escaped the worst of the 2011 earthquake and was strengthened by its owners: Roland Logan and Sharon Ng. They say they were told in 2013 the building could be incorporated into the arena's design, and are at loggerheads over its compulsory acquisition. Last week they were at the High Court seeking an injunction that would allow them to temporarily maintain ownership of the building, and that decision was released yesterday - and upheld. Roland joins Kathryn to discuss why they hope the building can be saved.
In the late 1960s the Wellington City Council surveyed all the commercial buildings in the city and marked nearly 200 as earthquake prone. The owners were given 15 years to either strengthen or demolish their buildings. The end result was mass demolition throughout the seventies and eighties.¹ Prompted by the Christchurch earthquakes, once again the council has published a list of over 630 earthquake prone buildings that need to be strengthened or demolished by 2030.²Of these earthquake prone buildings, the majority were built between 1880 and 1930, with 125 buildings appearing on the Wellington City Council Heritage Building List.³ This list accounts for a significant proportion of character buildings in the city. There is a danger that the aesthetic integrity of our city will be further damaged due to the urgent need to strengthen these buildings. Many of the building owners are resistant because of the high cost. By adapting these buildings to house co-workspaces, we can gain more than just the retention of the building’s heritage. The seismic upgrade provides the opportunity for the office space to be redesigned to suit changes in the ways we work. Through a design-based research approach this thesis proposes a framework that clarifies the process of adapting Wellington’s earthquake prone heritage buildings to accommodate co-working. This framework deals with the key concepts of program, structure and heritage. The framework is tested on one of Wellington’s earthquake prone heritage buildings, the Wellington Working Men’s Club, in order to demonstrate what can be gained from this strengthening process. ¹ Reid, J., “Hometown Boomtown,” in NZ On Screen (Wellington, 1983). ² Wellington City Council, List of Earthquake Prone Buildings as at 06/03/2017. (Wellington: Absolutely Positively Wellington. 2017). ³ ibid.
A photograph captioned by Paul Corliss, "Riccarton House".
A photograph captioned by Paul Corliss, "Riccarton House".
A photograph captioned by Paul Corliss, "Sumner Museum".
A photograph captioned by Paul Corliss, "Sumner Museum".
A view of the High to Hereford food court building from Hereford Street.
A night-time photograph of the Cranmer Court building on the corner of Kilmore and Montreal Streets. The building has been lit up from below. The octagonal section on the corner of the building was the part occupied by Plato Creative from March 2008 to November 2009. Although designed to house a book depot, this section was used as the principal's office while Christchurch Normal School was operating from the building.
A black and white, night-time photograph of the Cranmer Court building on the corner of Kilmore and Montreal Streets. The building has been lit up from below. The octagonal section on the corner of the building was the part occupied by Plato Creative from March 2008 to November 2009. Although designed to house a book depot, this section was used as the principal's office while Christchurch Normal School was operating from the building.
A photograph captioned by Paul Corliss, "Old foundry, Woolston".