Christchurch Town Hall
The $127.5 million dollar restoration of this iconic 1972 heritage-listed building, is one of the biggest conservation projects undertaken in Christchurch, completed over 3 years.
In September 2015, Hawkins selected The Connect Group as repair specialists to undertake complex concrete repairs, crack injection and seismic strengthening to the Christchurch Town Hall. The Christchurch Town Hall is an iconic Christchurch heritage building that unfortunately was extensively damaged during the 2011 Canterbury Earthquakes. The extent of the damage meant that this project was one of the largest earthquake restoration projects undertaken in Christchurch – taking over the years for contractors to complete.
Due to the Christchurch Town Hall being a listed heritage building, it created a challenge for The Connect Group team as we had to maintain all heritage aspects of the building and keep it true to its original form and function. This meant that visible concrete elements, including floors, walls and beams could not have any mechanical or aggressive grinding on them. It also means that we could not apply any coatings to disguise the repairs. To solve this, we had to use extensive sampling methods using various repair techniques. We also had to repair badly damaged concrete spalling throughout the building, we had to develop new methods to restore the integrity and the texture of the heritage finish.
Due to the scale of the project that stood before us, the application of carbon fibre was one of the largest carbon fibre projects undertaken in New Zealand. This presented challenges due to the size, shape, height and roof pitch. We also had to determine natural factors such as wind, heat and moisture. The nature of this meant that a high level of Quality Assurance was required with custom documentation, extensive daily testing and photographic records, all supplied throughout the 36 months we worked on this repair.
Following approval from our recommended repair methods, we undertook the concrete repair, crack injection and seismic strengthening work to strengthen the Christchurch Town Hall and protect the asset from future seismic activity. We successfully met the desired building standard and worked with the project engineers to design a specific engineered solution.
Hawkins selected The Connect Group for this project because of our extensive range of services and our proven ability to collaborate and tailor solutions specific to each project.
The Christchurch Town Hall reopened its doors to the public in 2019. Since its reopening the building has won a multitude of awards including the Naylor Love heritage and adaptive reuses property awards. In2020, the Christchurch Town Hall was registered as a Category One Heritage Building.