Christchurch ’48 Hours’ Competition

Christchurch Architects were put to the challenge recently, with a design competition to address the earthquake ravaged city centre.

Starting at midday on 1st July 2011 and finishing an exhausting but exhilarating 48 hours later, 15 teams comprising over a hundred Architects, architectural designers, landscape architects, urban designers, engineers and students gathered together at Lincoln University to compete in the 48 Hour Design Challenge. Teams were assigned one of five earthquake damaged sites within Christchurch’s central city, and tasked to propose innovative Architecture that would address the reconstruction opportunities presented by each site, as well as wider economic, environmental and social themes.

There were four sites within the Red Zone: Cathedral Square and BNZ Building; 160 Gloucester Street; the Orion NZ Building at 203 Gloucester Street; and 90 Armagh Street, including the Avon River and Victoria Square. The fifth site, which sits outside the Red Zone, is the former Christchurch Women’s Hospital at 885 Colombo Street.

The supreme award was allocated to the designers of a scheme for the 15000m² Orion site, situated near the Avon River in central Christchurch.

The winning solution proposed salvaging the structure of an existing car parking building to create a new and exciting mixture of retail and office spaces, affordable housing, a covered market and an innovative community space in the form of a 30 meter timber lattice framed floating ‘drum’. The design created a landscaped public square with pedestrian links to Latimer Square and the river, acknowledging multiple layers of connection with time & place, weaving in memories of earlier waterways, wells and flora, and the indigenous pre European occupation and food gathering activity associated with the Avon.

“Though there is only so much that can be accomplished in 48 hours, this outcome vindicates a strongly design led collaborative approach rather than a planning rule driven approach to rebuilding our city”, said Paul King, one of the winning Architects.

The winning team, named after its sponsor ‘NZ Wood’ consisted of:

Jason Guiver, team coordinator & sponsor, NZ Wood Timber Design Advisory Centre
Paul King, Architect and 3D visualiser, Architecture Prime Ltd
Jasper van der Lingen, Architect, Sheppard + Rout Architects Ltd
Di Lucas, Land scape Architect, Lucas Associates
Dr Jackie Bowring, Professor of Urban and landscape design, Lincoln University
Chris Speed, Structural Engineer, Dunning Thornton Ltd
Ben Carter, Civil Engineering Student, University of Canterbury