The Arts Centre Te Matatiki Toi Ora

The Arts Centre Te Matatiki Toi Ora is an internationally renowned centre for culture and the arts, covering a 2.2 hectare central city block. The distinctive and compelling Gothic Revival building cluster, with 23 Category 1 heritage buildings was built over the course of more than 50 years. A treasured part of Canterbury and New Zealand’s cultural heritage, The Arts Centre was severely damaged in the Christchurch earthquakes.

With 30 years of engineering experience on site at The Arts Centre, the team at Holmes was ideally placed to help bring the buildings in the complex back to life. We delivered a full seismic review and analysis of the site, using our own custom-built Non Linear Time History Analysis technology to understand the levels of damage and explore the opportunities for restoration. From an engineering point of view this project is extremely complex: no two buildings are exactly the same, each demanding new thinking and approaches.

Part of the challenge of The Arts Centre project, and other heritage restorations, is the need to preserve the heritage features that make the site special with protecting life. Robust, resilient structures that still exude the personality and character that makes The Arts Centre so special is the ultimate end game. Too often, heritage restoration fails in that regard, with intrusive and obvious structural engineering interventions irrevocably changing the character of the building. In that way, heritage engineering requires a more personal connection with the structures than many new builds might—basing our team onsite at The Arts Centre for more than four years after decades of ongoing work has definitely cemented that deep connection.

With the many different buildings, site conditions and levels of damage, we set out a phased plan, designing solutions to match each unique challenge. Holmes’ expert engineers took the lead on the project management, bringing the many contributors together to get the project moving in the right direction. With the recent opening of the Gymnasium, the wider Arts Centre team we’re part of got to celebrate some of the incredibly hard work that’s gone in so far. But, there’s plenty more to come. This is one of the biggest heritage restorations in New Zealand’s history, and one of the largest projects of its type anywhere in the world. We’re extremely proud to have had a strong hand in bringing The Arts Centre back to life.