My weekend snooping around Ōtautahi's most famous buildings

The Spinoff

09-05-2025

Alex Casey goes on an odyssey through some of the most important buildings in Christchurch.
Moving to Ōtautahi in the 2020s is a bit like starting a prestige TV show about five seasons in. The budget is massive, the production values slick and shiny, and the reviews are positive, but you still can't escape the fact that you've missed out on pivotal early character building and some truly enormous plot points. As a result, you're left hurriedly searching up things on Wikipedia at social events, nodding along sagely at mentions of vaguely familiar villains (Gerry Brownlee) and collecting morsels of lore like a magpie wherever you can.
Can you really ever understand a place if you missed the most galvanising moments in its recent history? And how do you go about backfilling that knowledge and those experiences? I've learned a lot already through telling stories of creativity and community here, be it the miniature rendering of the pre-quake city or the turtle rescuer still caring for quake refugees. But it was a recent deep dive into the Brutalist Timezone and the new stadium at Te Kaha that opened up another crucial (and screamingly obvious) portal to better understanding Christchurch: the buildings as central characters.
With that in mind, last weekend I toddled along to Open Christchurch, an architecture festival where the doors are swung open to some of the city's most significant buildings. Where the phrase 'architecture festival' may have previously left me retreating into one of those deep sleep chambers used by Matt Damon in Interstellar, I'd noticed there was a certain buzz around this festival for the past few years and it always seemed to sell out quickly. This year I managed to nab a powerful itinerary, and here is everything I learned from my snooping.
Saturday
My day began with a tour of College House in Riccarton, a place I had only ever driven past on the way to the airport and assumed, based on the aggro high white concrete walls, was some sort of boring sludge factory. But as we were welcomed in to stand by the crackling fire in the lounge of the student hall, I realised I could not have been more wrong. Deemed by architect Sir Miles Warren as his greatest creation when it opened in the 1960s, College House is still used as swanky University of Canterbury student accommodation to this day.
Architect Alec Bruce, who worked on the post-quake renovations, guided us through the courtyard to the Arthur Sims Library, which gave me a chilling bloodlust to study again (especially with texts on display such as Dan Carter's autobiography and 'Pizzas and Pastas'). Beneath rich warm wood panelling and spiral iron staircases, we gazed up at the centrepiece – an enormous web-like structure of dark beams and light fittings. 'Utterly gratuitous and utterly brilliant,' Bruce mused. 'And totally unexpected from the outside.'
Same goes for the College House chapel, which would be the first but not the last time I would hear about Gothic Revival (less spooky vibes, more high pitched roofing). Costing $3m to repair post-quake, the chapel was split into six pieces so the ground floor could be restored. 'This is not the sort of building an engineer would let you design post earthquake,' said Bruce. We ended the tour in the ornate art-filled dining hall, which used to have an original Bill Hammond plonked by the coffee machine until they realised how much it was worth.
From College House I zipped into the city for a tour of the Observatory Hotel in the Arts Centre, originally built in 1891 and home to the magical Townsend Teece telescope, one of the city's greatest objects. I'd written about the miraculous survival of the ' munched ' telescope during the quakes, but hadn't had the chance to nosey around its surrounds. The entire observatory tower collapsed in 2011 and was, as guide Shane Horgan told us, meticulously reconstructed with every piece of basalt stone numbered and put back in its original place like a jigsaw puzzle.
Inside the building, formerly the University of Canterbury's home of astronomy and physics, the original wooden staircase curled towards the heavens. It was still standing when everything collapsed around it, and was taken offsite and kept under a tarp at Christchurch Boys High. The stairs creaked in welcome as we ascended. 'That's a heritage feature,' laughed Horgan. 'Cost a lot of money, by the way.' After a peek at some of the rooms (very flash, very high ceilings) we ended the tour under the mighty telescope, still pointed skyward as it was over 130 years ago.
Back on the ground, I sprinted past punters on the river to Te Ara Pū Hā – yet another place I had no idea existed. Modelled on The High Line in New York, this is a four-block stretch of lush green planting that will one day form a forest corridor along the city's edge. Landscape architect Adrian Taylor and cultural advisor Te Marino Lenihan explained that the design was born out of a close working relationship with Ngai Tahu. 'The collaboration was powerful and should be done more often,' said Lenihan. 'This is the blueprint of true treaty partnership.'
That idea of treaty partnership was evident on the tour itself, which opened with Taylor doing his pepeha aloud for the very first time – Lenihan encouraging him to go off the cuff – and the group introducing themselves and where they were from. Along the way, Lenihan explained how the rebuild allowed for Ngāi Tahu to have a greater presence in the city. 'Before the quakes, Christchurch was known as the most English city outside of England,' he said. 'We were invisible as mana whenua, so the opportunity was there to put our fingerprints on the future.'
Those fingerprints could be found everywhere from the illuminated pounamu tiles to the angular stone seating inspired by purupuru. Wandering down four city blocks, we learned about the dozens of species of native plants on show, including edibles for foraging like pūha and horopito, as well as soon-to-be giants like kahikatea and harakeke. The tour ended with everyone cheersing with a 'mauri ora' before sampling a thimble of Taylor's own artisanal gin, infused with native botanicals from the very same walkway we had just strolled down.
As a non-drinker, I rode a light botanical buzz all the way to the Town Hall, chatting with a former architecture lecturer named Jonathan who had travelled from Napier for the festival. He showed me some of the sketches he had been doing around the city, and frequently stopped on the walk to point out how timber framing fire resistance works, or how the gold exterior of Tūranga looks like curtain being drawn open, or the provenance of the word 'keystone' as it relates to the arch on the Heritage hotel. My head was spinning, and not just from the 5ml of horopito gin.
We made it inside the Douglas Lillburn Auditorium, renowned for having some of the very best acoustics in the world. I walked onto the very same stage as the Vengaboys and clapped my hands. The sound reverberated powerfully around the entire hall, and I had to resist doing three more claps to the tune of 'Shalala Lala' in tribute to the Eurodance legends. I took a seat in the back row of the hall, exhausted, and watched a little kid in an All Blacks cap take the stage and belt a wobbly bit of the national anthem. Moved to tears, I knew it was time to go home.
Sunday
The day began with me racing through the labyrinth of fencing in the square to make it inside the Christ Church Cathedral for the 10am tour. Donning hard hats and fluro pink vests, a group of 50 of us were given a brief introduction outside by Carolyne Grant, director of the rebuild project team. 'This is the literal and figurative heart of the city,' she said. 'It took 40 years to build the first time, we hope it is not that long this time.' Widely reported as being 'mothballed' late last year due to a lack of funds, Grant rejected the use of that term.
'It's not mothballed yet: it's paused. And we will need to find a new way forward,' she said.
With a heartfelt warning that re-entering the cathedral can feel overwhelming, we quietly stepped inside. One woman instinctively put her hand over her heart as she looked around at the exposed wooden skeleton. Another muttered 'oh, it's so sad' to nobody in particular. People shared stories of the last time they had been inside, including a man who had climbed the steeple a few weeks before the quake, and a woman who had visited the flower show with her Nana just days before. A topiary elephant stood amongst the ruins for weeks, apparently.
I admired a large yellow Beyonce-style fan, positioned close to where the altar might have originally been. It constantly secretes a bubblegum-smelling vapour that keeps the pigeons away – the same who famously dropped two tonnes of poo over their decade of squatting. Grant also acknowledged the dozens of stray cats and kittens who lived in the derelict cathedral over the years, and assured us all that they had all been safely rehomed. Now, her attention is focussed on the future: 'we could lose the cathedral if we don't care for it,' she warned.
It was very difficult not to be stirred by the sheer scale, emotion and ambition of the cathedral restoration project, already $85 million deep and only one third of the way complete when it was put on ice. Should Christchurch cling on to salvaging the first cathedral ever built in this country? Or cut our losses, let the pigeons back in, and call it an overpriced aviary? I didn't know the answer and I didn't really have time to mull it over – across the square the mayor and Dame Adrienne Stewart were about to cut the ribbon on the brand new Court Theatre.
With dust from the cathedral still on my boots, I joined a heaving crowd of radio hosts, Court Jesters and Mark Hadlow, all chomping at the bit to get into the new theatre. 'There is no place like home, so welcome to our new home,' said Dame Stewart. We poured inside, marvelling at all the exposed light wood and rusted exterior, a nod to the temporary location – The Shed – where the Court has operated for over a decade. Kids were doing improv in the rehearsal space, we got to poke around the props (fake eggs! fake pizza!) and look at the costume workroom.
'People make costumes here for their job,' explained one mum to her daughter, whose jaw was on the floor at all the wigs and shiny fabrics. 'You could go to uni and study that.'
From the brand new home of theatre to a temporary home of worship, I trotted my dusty boots through Latimer Square to the Transitional 'cardboard' Cathedral. Designed by Japanese architect Shigeru Ban and opened in 2013 for just $7 million dollars, there really was quite a lot of cardboard happening everywhere. As I stared up at the 96 cardboard tubes, each weighing 500 kg, that lined the A-Frame building, guide Richard Parker told me that Ban kindly donated the design pro-bono to the city. 'He's an All Blacks supporter, which helps,' he smiled.
The very last stop on my tour was Chateau on the Park, a really buzzy hotel designed by Peter Beavan in the 1970s in time for the Commonwealth Games. Tucked away in the bush off Deans Ave – 'you can still walk to Ricky mall from here, but you really feel like you are somewhere else' said guide Ann McEwan – even my half-shut eyes could recognise the high pitched roof as Gothic Revival. There was also a fish-filled moat (?) and two enormous suspended functional cauldrons (?). 'Two of the most bizarre things you will ever find in Christchurch,' McKewan said.
As a smiling robot vacuum cleaner parted our tour group like the red sea, I felt like I was finally transcending all sense of time and space. In just 48 hours I had been inside late 1800s Gothic Revival relics, 1960s university halls, 2010s post-quake disaster architecture and a brand new 2020s theatre only a few hours old. I had also seen the future in a newly-planted greenway, the lush results of which none of us will even be around to see. I had sipped botanical gin, picked pūha, clapped on a stage, and learned a lot more about this place than a Wikipedia page could ever offer.