Urban Wilderness - A City Redefined

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Design Intent: Christchurch is a car dominated city, encouraged by the presence of off-street carparks, a grid road layout and a low-density planning. Green spaces are restricted to frames or parks within the city. The earthquake rebuilds focusing on the urban core, on rebuilding buildings and then later making them attractive. While not entirely wrong, constructing buildings alone will not create a revolutionary city.

City redefined has three main goals, to improve transportation, liberate nature and evolve culture. Christchurch has been called the English city, the garden city and even the earthquake city, but now is the opportunity for Christchurch to evolve and redefine what it actually means to be a city.

With the removal of car parks, space will open for Christchurch City to be a city bursting with wilderness, proudly incorporating art, food and native wildlife. The dominance of buildings, roads and grids will be challenged with organic growth and self-sustaining nature. Christchurch city will become an experience for both locals and tourists of wild and welcomed nature.

Focusing on the experience of people, the new city looks to draw inspiration from Christchurch’s gothic revival design history through the creation of an island, exploring theories of medieval gardens which looked to create refuge by ignoring the outside world. Inside the island a fractal pattern of shared pathways connects a hierarchy of gardens and public spaces. To the east of the city more traditional grid forms support the city with medium density housing and connections to nearby communities.