This document describes the tool developed for capturing the abandoned and removed assets using the SCIRT GIS viewer.
The overgrown garden of an abandoned house in Richmond. The photographer comments, "Revisiting our abandoned house. The undergrowth is taking over".
Interior damage in a house in Richmond. The photographer comments, "Revisiting our abandoned house. Cracked plaster".
Interior damage in a house in Richmond. The photographer comments, "Revisiting our abandoned house. Cracked plaster".
Interior damage in a house in Richmond. The photographer comments, "Revisiting our abandoned house. Cracked plaster".
Interior damage in a house in Richmond. The photographer comments, "Revisiting our abandoned house. Cracked plaster".
Interior damage in a house in Richmond. The photographer comments, "Revisiting our abandoned house. Plaster walls pulled apart".
Interior damage in a house in Richmond. The photographer comments, "Revisiting our abandoned house. Plaster decorations on the arch in the hallway are cracked".
Interior damage in a house in Richmond. The photographer comments, "Revisiting our abandoned house. Cracks in the hall plaster walls and the decorative arch".
A pile of tarseal scraped from the damaged River Road sits in front of a house. The photographer comments, "Road repairs and abandoned houses".
Interior damage in a house in Richmond. The photographer comments, "Revisiting our abandoned house. Plaster decorations on the arch in the hallway are cracked".
Interior damage in a house in Richmond. The photographer comments, "Revisiting our abandoned house. Cracks in the hall plaster walls and the decorative arch".
Interior damage in a house in Richmond. The photographer comments, "Revisiting our abandoned house. Cracks in the hall plaster walls and the decorative arch".
Interior damage in a house in Richmond. The photographer comments, "Revisiting our abandoned house. Cracks in the hall plaster walls and the decorative arch".
Damage to the interior of a house in Richmond. The photographer comments, "Revisiting our abandoned house. Sagging walls have pulled the stereo shelves out of line".
Interior damage in a house in Richmond. The wall above a doorway is badly cracked. The photographer comments, "Revisiting our abandoned house. Cracked plaster in the kitchen".
Interior damage in a house in Richmond. Cracks are visible in the walls. The photographer comments, "Revisiting our abandoned house. Looking from the lounge back to the dining room".
A man takes a photograph inside a damaged house in Richmond. The photographer comments, "Revisiting our abandoned house. Photographing the dining room, note the cracked wall linings. (My brother Ross from Invercargill was visiting, he's in several of these)".
The kitchen of a damaged house in Richmond. The photographer comments, "Revisiting our abandoned house. Kitchen bench and tiles are relatively straight, The range hood has a lean because the roof moved, pulling the exhaust vent with it".
A man takes a photograph inside a damaged house in Richmond. The photographer comments, "Revisiting our abandoned house. Cracks in the north side of the kitchen. (My brother Ross from Invercargill was visiting, he's in several of these)".
Damage to a house in Richmond. The foundation is all that remains of one room, and the exposed interior wall has been covered with builders' paper for protection. The photographer comments, "Revisiting our abandoned house. Back door and the floor of the sunroom".
Damage to a house in Richmond. The foundation is all that remains of one room, and the exposed interior wall has been covered with builders' paper for protection. The photographer comments, "Revisiting our abandoned house. Temporary protection after the sunroom was demolished".
A man takes a photograph in the kitchen of a damaged house in Richmond. Behind him, large cracks are visible above the doorway. The photographer comments, "Revisiting our abandoned house. Kitchen cracked, bench on a lean. (My brother Ross from Invercargill was visiting, he's in several of these)".
A man takes a photograph in the kitchen of a damaged house in Richmond. Behind him, cracks are visible in the walls. The photographer comments, "Revisiting our abandoned house. Kitchen and dining area. (My brother Ross from Invercargill was visiting, he's in several of these)".
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.
Damage to a house in Richmond. The foundation is all that remains of one room, and the exposed interior wall has been covered with builders' paper for protection. Weeds grow between cracks in the concrete patio. The photographer comments, "Revisiting our abandoned house. Cracked patio. The wooden floor is all that remains of a sunny living space with bifold doors, opening the house to the garden. This was so broken on 4/9/10 that it was immediately demolished".
A city’s planted trees, the great majority of which are in private gardens, play a fundamental role in shaping a city’s wild ecology, ecosystem functioning, and ecosystem services. However, studying tree diversity across a city’s many thousands of separate private gardens is logistically challenging. After the disastrous 2010–2011 earthquakes in Christchurch, New Zealand, over 7,000 homes were abandoned and a botanical survey of these gardens was contracted by the Government’s Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (CERA) prior to buildings being demolished. This unprecedented access to private gardens across the 443.9 hectares ‘Residential Red Zone’ area of eastern Christchurch is a unique opportunity to explore the composition of trees in private gardens across a large area of a New Zealand city. We analysed these survey data to describe the effects of housing age, socio-economics, human population density, and general soil quality, on tree abundance, species richness, and the proportion of indigenous and exotic species. We found that while most of the tree species were exotic, about half of the individual trees were local native species. There is an increasing realisation of the native tree species values among Christchurch citizens and gardens in more recent areas of housing had a higher proportion of smaller/younger native trees. However, the same sites had proportionately more exotic trees, by species and individuals, amongst their larger planted trees than older areas of housing. The majority of the species, and individuals, of the larger (≥10 cm DBH) trees planted in gardens still tend to be exotic species. In newer suburbs, gardens in wealthy areas had more native trees than gardens from poorer areas, while in older suburbs, poorer areas had more native big trees than wealthy areas. In combination, these describe, in detail unparalleled for at least in New Zealand, how the tree infrastructure of the city varies in space and time. This lays the groundwork for better understanding of how wildlife distribution and abundance, wild plant regeneration, and ecosystem services, are affected by the city’s trees.