Twelve years on, Christchurch’s devastated buildings restored

All over the world interest has been building – as it were – in architecture open days, where the public is permitted one-off entry to otherwise inaccessible, man-made landmarks.

In an architecturally significant Christchurch, New Zealand’s second biggest and planned city where thousands of buildings were destroyed or damaged in the devastating February 22, 2011 earthquake, such egalitarian-minded festivals are imbued with added meaning.

During next month’s Open Christchurch festival people will be able to go behind the scenes at the Christ Church Cathedral, which was extensively damaged by the quake and is undergoing a meticulous and controversially costly restoration.

Tickets for tours of the Anglican cathedral - completed in 1904 and not set to fully reopen until 2027 - in this most historically Anglican of cities, are already sold out.

However, many other easier-to-access buildings feature in the Open Christchurch program, ranging from the contemporary, multi-award-winning He Puna Taimoana hot-spring baths, to the early 20th-century Isaac Theatre Royal.

One major building, the 19th-century timber and stone Canterbury Provincial Council Chambers, inaccessible to the public since the earthquake, is for the first time part of this year’s Open Christchurch program.

“Heritage advocates have had to pick their fights,” says John Walsh, author of Christchurch Architecture: A Walking Guide. “The good news is that some important buildings of various vintages were saved from demolition and have been or will be restored.

“For instance, nearly all of the two dozen buildings at the Gothic Revival Arts Centre complex – formerly Canterbury College – have been restored and impressively so.”