John Roughan: Christchurch blank canvas again

Warren and Mahoney's Town Hall design is a gem while the Provincial Chambers, built in 1865, are in ruins. Photo / Simon Baker

Christchurch hasn't had much going for it. Flat, featureless unless you find the barren Port Hills beautiful as some do. On a clear day you can see the Southern Alps but they are far away. They can make the city feel far from anywhere.

Maybe it is the lack of natural landmarks that have made its buildings magnificent. Christchurch is a flat canvas and it has bred architects that have been probably the country's best. Warren and Mahoney, Peter Beaven. Warren and Mahoney's Town Hall auditorium is still the most stunning modern space I have experienced anywhere.

"Experience" really is the word. Step into it when it is empty and it hums. Every balcony and acoustic panel feels so finely balanced and perfectly poised that you could swear you hear a symphony beginning.

Christchurch Town Hall was so successful that Wellington commissioned a copy but it is not quite the same.

Peter Beaven, a more playful architect, has worked out of one of the city's well preserved historic buildings, the Provincial Council Chambers that were built in 1865 and fell down on Tuesday.

He has been a fighter for the preservation of Christchurch's old stone character, an admirer of its early architect, Benjamin Mountfort, who built the provincial chambers, the Arts Centre, Christ's College and much else.

"Without him," Beaven has said, "I wouldn't live in Christchurch, or New Zealand."

Many Cantabrians wouldn't live anywhere else. At least that was true until Tuesday. My father, brother, two sisters and their families are there and I don't think any of them have thoughts of leaving but this is not the time to ask.

The city is numb. My nephew, a builder, was in High St at 12.51pm and saw things nobody should ever see. His truck became an ambulance for the rest of the day.

Cantabrians were eager to share war stories after the September shake but not now. One big earthquake is a freak, a second feels like a trend.

My brother sounded listless by Thursday, his second day of mopping out the mud and mess left on the ground floor of his business. He had just pulled up a carpet and discovered a crack in the floor.

He may not stay in that building but he will stay in his city. The place is in his blood.

Christchurch has an enviable sense of its heritage. Most Cantabrians at some time have walked the "bridle path" over the Port Hills from Lyttelton, following the steps of the Church of England colonists who had to drain a swamp on the edge of the plains.

The passenger lists of the first four ships are recorded in stone in Cathedral Square. Monuments to provincial superintendents abound. Someone took the trouble to tweet on Tuesday that William Rolleston had toppled off his pedestal.

That was possibly before the Cathedral spire fell.

Christchurch now will never be the same. It could be better. Rebuilt cities are not normally better, the strenuous modernism that replaced some of Britain's bombed heritage looks a little sad.

But Christchurch has architects who understand it. The best known of them are getting on a bit. Sir Miles Warren has retired. Beaven is 85, Don Cowey, who died in the quake, was 82. But they have left plenty of disciples.

Not all of them admire the striking new Art Gallery seen in the background of every television news bulletin this week. The big face of curving glass panels is the front of an atrium that partially hides the heavy block structure of the picture galleries.

The same philosophy has covered Eden Park's new stands in plastic panels.

It is the polar opposite of a Warren and Mahoney design. They make buildings that do not hide their function but boast it. Buildings such as the Auckland University student union, modelled on a smaller one they built at Canterbury, which declare their purpose in slabs of concrete that are stylish and lively.

Warren and Mahoney's work is all around New Zealand now, at Smales Farm on the North Shore, Wellington's Westpac Stadium, Trusts Stadium at Te Atatu, Waikato University's Academy of Performing Arts ... But it started on the flat canvas of Christchurch and that is where it gives the landscape life.

A place that can mix those perfectly proportioned forms with buildings in Beaven's style has a great deal going for it. Beaven has fun with turrets, courtyards, steep roofs and hidden alcoves. He loves the history that was standing around him until Tuesday and he builds in brick and stone.

Architecture professor Peter Walker, writing of Warren and Mahoney's work for the firm's 50th jubilee, lamented that "We cannot turn the clock back to a time when it seemed possible that architecture could orchestrate a general redemption of the city ..."

Christchurch can now.