06 July 2011 Christchurch Mayor encouraged insomniac architects

Canterbury’s earthquakes caused further sleepless nights at the weekend, but this time the wakefulness was voluntary and for a good cause  -  the re-building of Christchurch.

Over 100 architects, landscape architects, landscape designers, engineers and associated industry personnel  from  New Zealand and overseas worked around the clock, without break, in a 48-Hour Design Challenge to produce design proposals for what parts of earthquake damaged central Christchurch could look like in the future after rebuilding.

The 48-hour Christchurch City Council event was held in Lincoln University’s School of Landscape Architecture in state-of-the-art design studios.

Opening the Challenge, Christchurch City Council’s Public Affairs General Manager Lydia Aydon, said the Government had tasked the City Council to come up with a plan.

“We have been given nine months to present the plan to the Government.”

A teleconference link then followed, to the offices of Manchester City Council and Sir Richard Leese, who led the rebuilding of inner-city Manchester after the devastation of an IRA bomb attack in 1996. 

“In Manchester we didn’t just want to re-build, we wanted to make it a better city,” he said.

The Challenge participants worked in teams, each allocated randomly to one of five different city sites for which they had to prepare designs, plans and proposals. Two members from each team were taken on an authorised visit of the Red Zone to see their locations at first hand.

The teams’ proposals were judged according to the incorporation of public space, green building elements, seismic stability and economic feasibility and there was an award ceremony on Sunday night.

Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker visited the Challenge and encouraged the participants.

“So much is in your hands,” he told participants. “Design well! We’ve got to make this the safest city on the planet.

“What you are doing here is, if it’s done well, will become the new heritage.”

Among individual site winners of the Challenge was the Lincoln University School of Landscape Architecture team led by Head of School Neil Challenger. This team produced proposals for The 

Press’  distribution centre site on Gloucester Street. The team members, pictured here, are from left:  Perry Turoa Royal, Erica Gilchrist, Jacky Lough, Laura Pyne, Silvia Tavares and Neil Challenger. Absent: Chris Bruin. 
Jacky, Laura, Silvia and Chris are all doing postgraduate degrees in the School of Architecture. Perry is an architect with Royal Associates; Erica, a Lincoln University graduate, is a practitioner and on the staff of the School.

The overall supreme winning team, with a design for the Orion site and property bordered by Manchester, Gloucester and Armagh streets,  was led by NZ Wood Director Jason Guiver of Nelson.  Lincoln University’s Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture, Jacky Bowring, was a member of this team along with former Lincoln University staff member Di Lucas.