Te tūāoma tuarima New Building & Basement 2025–2028

The first of several large concrete pours has been completed, marking the start of the new-build element of the redevelopment. It will take until mid-2026 to finish the concrete slab for the outer basement floor.

Leighs Construction will start building the new base-isolated basement and five-storey building in early 2026. The basement will be used to store the 2.3 million objects in the collection. The ground, second, and two mezzanine levels will be dedicated to exhibitions and other public areas, including a large floor-to-ceiling atrium housing the 26-metre-long blue whale skeleton. The top floor will accommodate Museum staff, laboratories and research spaces.

The new building will be barely visible from Rolleston Avenue, tucked behind the 1870 and 1877 Mountfort buildings and the facade of the now-demolished Centennial Wing.

The Museum let the contract to build the new basement and building so that they are weathertight and insurable in November 2024.

The Museum has funds either available or committed to cover this stage of the redevelopment, which is scheduled for completion in early 2028. If we haven’t secured additional funding for Stage 5, the building fit-out, by then, we may have to pause the project. That’s more than two years away.

What do Museum staff do when their building is closed for redevelopment?

We’re regularly asked, and see comments in the media and online, about why the Museum continues to employ about the same number of staff as we did when the Rolleston Avenue building was open.

People often only see the Museum as a free visitor attraction with great exhibitions and displays telling the stories of Waitaha Canterbury and Antarctica – a fun, free family day out.

The essence of the Canterbury Museum is not the bricks and mortar of the building, but the collection of 2.3 million taonga (treasures) amassed over more than 150 years of collecting and donations from generations of Cantabrians and from around Aotearoa New Zealand and the world. This is at the heart of all Museum mahi (work).

While we are out of Rolleston Avenue, we're still operating three central city visitor attractions - the Canterbury Museum Pop-Up, Quake City and Ravenscar House Museum. We're also researching, designing and creating the 60-plus new exhibitions, public spaces, and other projects for the new visitor experience in the new Museum. On top of all this we're continuing to inventory the collection and provide public access to the collection.

See more in the video