A view down the driveway of a property on Avonside Drive to its garage. The slabs of concrete that make up the driveway have all visibly shifted, and the garage is on a lean.
A gravel walkway in the process of being paved next to the Avon River. On the side are piles of dirt that has been dug up to make way for the walkway.
A gravel walkway in the process of being paved next to the Avon River. On the side are piles of dirt that has been dug up to make way for the walkway.
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "An unusual house in Zena Place, Horseshoe Lake. This area is all red zoned, so the land issues are such that all the houses will be demolished".
A photograph of street art on the wall of a building in Sydenham. The photographer believes that the artwork was created by the artist 'Misery'.
A photograph of street art on the wall of a building in Sydenham. The photographer believes that the artwork was created by the artist 'Misery'.
A photograph of a corrugated-iron clad building on Oxford Street, which is all that remains standing after the buildings around it have been demolished. The photograph is captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "13 Oxford Street in Lyttelton".
The now vacated Christchurch City Council building suffered some damage in the magnitude 7.1 earthquake that struck Christchurch on Saturday 4 September 2010.
The now vacated Christchurch City Council building suffered some damage in the magnitude 7.1 earthquake that struck Christchurch on Saturday 4 September 2010.
The increase in urban population has required cities to rethink their strategies for minimising greenhouse gas impacts and adapting to climate change. While urban design and planning policy have been guided by principles such as walkability (to reduce the dependence on cars) and green infrastructure (to enhance the quality of open spaces to support conservation and human values), there have been conflicting views on what spatial strategies will best prepare cities for a challenging future. Researchers supporting compact cities based upon public Transit Oriented Development have claimed that walkability, higher density and mixed-uses make cities more sustainable (Owen, 2009) and that, while green spaces in cities are necessary, they are dull in comparison with shopfronts and street vendors (Speck, 2012, p 250). Other researchers claim that green infrastructure is fundamental to improving urban sustainability and attracting public space users with improved urban comfort, consequently encouraging walkability (Pitman and Ely, 2013). Landscape architects tend to assume that ‘the greener the better’; however, the efficiency of urban greenery in relation to urban comfort and urbanity depends on its density, distribution and the services provided. Green infrastructure can take many forms (from urban forests to street trees) and provide varied services (amended microclimate, aesthetics, ecology and so forth). In this paper, we evaluate the relevance of current policy in Christchurch regarding both best practice in green infrastructure and urban comfort (Tavares, 2015). We focus on the Christchurch Blueprint for rebuilding the central city, and critically examine the post-earthquake paths the city is following regarding its green and grey infrastructures and the resulting urban environment. We discuss the performance and appropriateness of the current Blueprint in post-earthquake Christchurch, particularly as it relates to the challenges that climate change is creating for cities worldwide.
The level of destruction from the 2011 Christchurch earthquakes led to changes in the New Zealand seismic building code. The destruction showed that the NZ building codes did not fully performed to expectation and needed Improvement to ensure that impact of future earthquakes would be minimised. The building codes have been amended to improve buildings resilience to earthquake and other related extreme loading conditions. Rebuilding Christchurch with the new modifications in the seismic building code comes with its own unique challenges to the entire system. This project investigates the impact of rebuilding Christchurch with the new seismic Building codes in terms of how the new changes affected the building industry and the management of construction.
During the 2011 M7.8 Kaikōura earthquake, ground motions recorded near the epicentre showed a significant spatial variation. The Te Mara farm (WTMC) station, the nearest to the epicentre, recorded 1g and 2.7g of horizontal and vertical peak ground accelerations (PGA), respectively. The nearby Waiu Gorge (WIGC) station recorded a horizontal PGA of 0.8g. Interestingly, however, the Culverden Airlie Farm (CULC) station that was very closely located to WIGC recorded a horizontal PGA of only 0.25g. This poster demonstrates how the local geological condition could have contributed to the spatially variable ground motions observed in the North Canterbury, based on the results of recently conducted geophysical investigations. The surficial geology of this area is dominated by alluvial gravel deposits with traces of silt. A borehole log showed that the thickness of the sediments at WTMC is over 76 metres. Interestingly, the shear wave velocity (Vs) profiles obtained from the three strong motion sites suggest unusually high shear wave velocity of the gravelly sediments. The velocity of sediments and the lack of clear peaks in the horizontal-to-vertical (H/V) spectral ratio at WTMC suggest that the large ground motion observed at this station was likely caused by the proximity of the station to the causative fault itself; the site effect was likely insignificant. Comparisons of H/V spectral ratios and Vs profiles suggest that the sediment thickness is much smaller at WIGC compared with CULC; the high PGA at WIGC was likely influenced by the high-frequency amplification caused by the response of shallow sediments.
A video of a presentation by Dr Scott Miles during the Community Resilience Stream of the 2016 People in Disasters Conference. The presentation is titled, "A Community Wellbeing Centric Approach to Disaster Resilience".The abstract for this presentation reads as follows: A higher bar for advancing community disaster resilience can be set by conducting research and developing capacity-building initiatives that are based on understanding and monitoring community wellbeing. This presentation jumps off from this view, arguing that wellbeing is the most important concept for improving the disaster resilience of communities. The presentation uses examples from the 2010 and 2011 Canterbury earthquakes to illustrate the need and effectiveness of a wellbeing-centric approach. While wellbeing has been integrated in the Canterbury recovery process, community wellbeing and resilience need to guide research and planning. The presentation unpacks wellbeing in order to synthesize it with other concepts that are relevant to community disaster resilience. Conceptualizing wellbeing as either the opportunity for or achievement of affiliation, autonomy, health, material needs, satisfaction, and security is common and relatively accepted across non-disaster fields. These six variables can be systematically linked to fundamental elements of resilience. The wellbeing variables are subject to potential loss, recovery, and adaptation based on the empirically established ties to community identity, such as sense of place. Variables of community identity are what translate the disruption, damage, restoration, reconstruction, and reconfiguration of a community's different critical services and capital resources to different states of wellbeing across a community that has been impacted by a hazard event. With reference to empirical research and the Canterbury case study, the presentation integrates these insights into a robust framework to facilitate meeting the challenge of raising the standard of community disaster resilience research and capacity building through development of wellbeing-centric approaches.
This thesis is a creative and critical exploration of how transmedia storytelling meshes with political documentary’s nature of representing social realities and goals to educate and promote social change. I explore this notion through Obrero (“worker”), my independently produced transmedia and transjournalistic documentary project that explores the conditions and context of the Filipino rebuild workers who migrated to Christchurch, New Zealand after the earthquake in 2011. While the project should appeal to New Zealanders, it is specifically targeted at an audience from the Philippines. Obrero began as a film festival documentary that co-exists with strategically refashioned Web 2.0 variants, a social network documentary and an interactive documentary (i-doc). Using data derived from the production and circulation of Obrero, I interrogate how the documentary’s variants engage with differing audiences and assess the extent to which this engagement might be effective. This thesis argues that contemporary documentary needs to re-negotiate established film aesthetics and practices to adapt in the current period of shifting technologies and fragmented audiences. Documentary’s migration to new media platforms also creates a demand for filmmakers to work with a transmedia state of mind—that is, the capacity to practise the old canons of documentary making while comfortably adjusting to new media production praxis, ethics, and aesthetics. Then Obrero itself, as the creative component of this thesis, becomes an instance of research through creative practice. It does so in two respects: adding new knowledge about the context, politics, and experiences of the Filipino workers in New Zealand; and offering up a broader model for documentary engagement, which I analyse for its efficacy in the digital age.
A temporary road sign indicates that the speed limit is 10 km/h along Rocking Horse Road in Southshore, due to the uneven surface of the road.
An abandoned residential property at 20 Seabreeze Close in Bexley. The roof is warped and the backyard is overgrown with weeds. A sticker has been placed on the power box to indicate that the power has been turned off.
A photograph of street art in Avonside. The artworks are on the walls of a derelict toilet block. The photographer believes that the artworks were created by the artist 'SGC'.
A photograph of USAR codes spray-painted on Grenadier House on Madras Street. A red sticker taped to the glass above indicates that the building is unsafe to enter.
A photograph of a child inflating one of the paper origami balloons of Halo. Halo is a temporary installation that is part of LUXCITY.
A photograph of a man inflating one of the paper origami balloons of Halo. Halo is a temporary installation that is part of LUXCITY.
A photograph of a child inflating one of the paper origami balloons of Halo. Halo is a temporary installation that is part of LUXCITY.
Sculptures of a kayaker, cyclist and bungee jumper decorating the steel bracing that has been placed on the front of the Worcester Street face of the Octagon Live Restaurant (formerly Trinity Church). Two of the figures are wearing santa hats.
A woman looking in though the window of an empty house on Avonside Drive. The overgrown lawn indicates that the house has been unoccupied for some time as a result of the 4 September 2010 earthquake.
The A and T Burt building on Ferry Road in Woolston. Bricks that have collapsed from the top section of the building have been cleared from the footpath below, and the building has been cordoned off with a safety fence.
St Mary & St Athanaslos church on Edgeware Road. The wall of the gable has crumbled onto the pavement below, bending the front gate. Road cones and tape indicate that it is not safe to enter.
A PDF copy of a handwritten journal kept by Robin Robins, documenting the repair work on his earthquake-damaged home between November 2012 and April 2017. Note that some personal information has been redacted from this document.
Yellow stickers on the window of 164 Victoria Street. The sticker on the left readings, "Danger, your building has a yellow placard, do not enter". The sticker on the right indicates that the building is restricted to essential business.
A photograph of a child inflating one of the paper origami balloons of Halo. Halo is a temporary installation that is part of LUXCITY.
The name Omeka for the Justice Precinct comes from the Biblical omega. Dating back to the prophecy of Ratana early last century, it is testimony to Ngāi Tahu’s faith that their claims for justice would be settled.
A photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "The light shines through these stained glass windows in ChristChurch Cathedral in a way that used to be seen only from the inside of the Cathedral".