Christchurch was devastated by a series of major earthquakes between 2010 and 2011, the most destructive striking in February 2011, killing 185 people and destroying or severely damaging much of the city’s historic central business district, including its landmark Gothic Revival cathedral, ChristChurch Cathedral, whose partially collapsed spire became one of the most widely shared images of the disaster. Unlike some cities that quietly rebuild away from public attention, Christchurch’s recovery has been deliberately visible, temporary and experimental structures filling gaps left by demolished buildings even as permanent reconstruction continues over a decade later.
The Cardboard Cathedral, a genuinely functional transitional cathedral built substantially from cardboard tubes, designed by Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, who has built similar disaster-relief structures following earthquakes elsewhere, became an unlikely symbol of the city’s determination to keep functioning and worshipping even while its historic cathedral remained too damaged to use.
A City That Turned Empty Lots Into Public Art
Christchurch’s earthquake recovery included the Re:START container mall, a shopping precinct built from stacked shipping containers on the site of destroyed retail buildings, initially intended as a temporary solution but operating for years and becoming a genuine symbol of resourceful, community-driven rebuilding rather than simply waiting for conventional reconstruction to catch up. Numerous vacant lots left by demolished buildings were transformed into temporary gardens, art installations, and public gathering spaces, a citywide pattern of turning absence into deliberate, if provisional, civic use.
Christchurch was originally planned in the 1850s as a deliberately English-style city, its layout and early architecture modelled on English cathedral towns, a character partially disrupted by the earthquakes but still visible in surviving Gothic Revival buildings and the city’s extensive Hagley Park, one of the largest urban parks in New Zealand.
Painting a City Still Actively Rebuilding
Christchurch’s mix of restored Gothic architecture and striking modern rebuilding gives a watercolourist a genuinely layered, ongoing story to work with. We’ve captured that resilience in our own Christchurch Watercolor Print, painted first by hand and printed to order on archival paper, a small piece of New Zealand for a wall at home.
Rebuilt deliberately in full public view rather than quietly, Christchurch remains a city whose recovery has become almost as significant to its identity as anything that came before the earthquakes.