A photograph of the large-scale fabric installation titled Kloud, which is part of LUXCITY.
A photograph of the large-scale fabric installation titled Kloud, which is part of LUXCITY.
A photograph of the large-scale fabric installation titled Kloud, which is part of LUXCITY.
A photograph of the large-scale fabric installation titled Kloud, which is part of LUXCITY.
A photograph of the large-scale fabric installation titled Kloud, which is part of LUXCITY.
A photograph of the large-scale fabric installation titled Kloud, which is part of LUXCITY.
A photograph of the large-scale fabric installation titled Kloud, which is part of LUXCITY.
A photograph of large fabric balloons being tied together as part of the eLITE installation for LUXCITY.
A photograph of architecture students wearing hard hats and high-visibility vests setting up the large-scale fabric installation titled Kloud, which is part of LUXCITY.
The MedLab building on Kilmore Street. Many of the windows are open or have been broken. Inside, ceiling tiles are missing and swaths of fabric hang from concrete beams.
Within four weeks of the September 4 2010 Canterbury Earthquake a new, loosely-knit community group appeared in Christchurch under the banner of “Greening the Rubble.” The general aim of those who attended the first few meetings was to do something to help plug the holes that had already appeared or were likely to appear over the coming weeks in the city fabric with some temporary landscaping and planting projects. This article charts the first eighteen months of Greening the Rubble and places the initiative in a broader context to argue that although seismic events in Christchurch acted as a “call to palms,” so to speak, the city was already in need of some remedial greening. It concludes with a reflection on lessons learned to date by GTR and commentary on the likely issues ahead for this new mini-social-environmental movement in the context of a quake-affected and still quake-prone major New Zealand city. One of the key lessons for GTR and all of those involved in Christchurch recovery activities to date is that the city is still very much in the middle of the event and is to some extent a laboratory for seismic and agency management studies alike.