EC-Rider Travels

Philip has kindly taken a few days off work so he can be our tour-guide and we headed back into Christchurch to pick up Mum and then visit the centre of town and in particular the Arts Centre which Philip has been running for the last five years. I had envisioned a modern complex of buildings and was always puzzled that he had chosen this route after being the CEO of the Court Theatre. How wrong was I, the Arts Centre is the largest collection of heritage buildings in New Zealand. Built from the 1870s in gothic revival architecture, it was originally the home of Canterbury College and later the university. Built in blue stone and granite from the Port Hills it is modelled on an Oxbridge college with quads and cloisters and is most attractive.

It was badly damaged during the 2011 earthquakes with a number of the buildings being destroyed. It has been a painstaking rebuild which Philip has been meticulously overseeing for the last five years. The Court Theatre was here but following the earthquake he moved it to a warehouse on the periphery of the city, which to great acclaim, he managed to re-open within nine months. It had out-grown its space in the Arts Centre so is being rebuilt elsewhere in the city and its old home will soon open as a health technology centre.

The university started to move to the outer city in the 1950s, the final department leaving in 1974 at which point it became an Arts Centre. It now houses art galleries, ballet studios, theatre rehearsal rooms, concert chambers, an observatory, a small theatre, a Māori Arts space, and a beautiful hall where we sang carols before lunch. Rutherford’s Den Museum is also here and on Thursday a permanent exhibition opens telling the story of the restoration of the Arts Centre, following the earthquake. There are also restaurants and ‘arty’ retail shops and most recently a very nice hotel. This is all done up in gorgeous pink and blue velvets and re-coloured William Morris fabrics reflecting the Arts and Crafts movement which was so prominent at the time and when the buildings first came into being.

Following our carols and a delicious lunch in one of the Arts Centre’s restaurants, we went to visit the temporary cathedral which was erected after the earthquake. It is an incredible building, designed pro-bono, by Japanese ‘disaster architect’ Shigera Ban. It is primarily made of shipping containers and cardboard and is a beautiful space which acts not only as a temporary Anglican cathedral but hosts concerts and civic events. Philip tells me that, despite little attention being made to the acoustics when being built, they are wonderful and singing and music sound fantastic. There has been much controversy about the rebuild of the cathedral and where it should be built, if at all. Work, however has now started to restore the cathedral, as it was, in the same place.

We then visited what is known as the ‘red-zone’ an area which was totally devastated by the earthquake and the land deemed too poor and vulnerable to rebuild. Very few houses survived and those which did are now surrounded by the most stunning park full of wonderful plants which would have originally been in people’s gardens.

In the evening I had my hair-cut by Janeen from the Philippines which was a great relief to all and then returned for another happy evening and feast cooked by Philip and Fenella.