The Need for Change 2020
Why the Museum had to be redeveloped
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This rabbit was on display in the Living Canterbury exhibition in the old Museum. Case moths ate his fur in just a few weeks.
The Need for Change
Canterbury Museum opened in 1867 and, in 1870, moved to a purpose-built neo-Gothic stone building, designed by Benjamin Mountfort, on its Rolleston Avenue site.
Buildings were added piecemeal in the 1870s and 1880s, 1958, 1977 and 1995 as the Museum collection grew.
The redevelopment addresses the constraints and challenges of the heritage buildings and major longstanding issues with the now-demolished twentieth-century buildings, which were at the end of or well beyond their useful life:
- Storerooms weren’t pest-proof. Temperature and humidity couldn’t be adequately controlled, damaging the taonga (treasures) that the buildings were meant to protect.
- Parts of the building leaked when it rained. Visitor facilities were outdated and inadequate for the 800,000 people who visited each year.
- Exhibition space was limited and inflexible; less than 1% of the collection could be displayed at any one time.
All of these issues pre-dated the Canterbury earthquakes, but many were exacerbated by them.
Watch the video
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Storage areas were scattered throughout the building, including the basement, which leaked when it rained.
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Green Light for Redevelopment
The Museum had relatively modest plans to upgrade the buildings in the 2000s, at a cost of around $86 million.
After the earthquakes, we had to go back to the drawing board as base isolation was needed across much of the site to protect people and the collection. This is standard for public buildings in earthquake-prone zones.
The Museum building covers virtually the whole of the land it sits on, surrounded by the Botanic Gardens, Christ’s College and the Robert McDougall Gallery. We couldn’t build out. We couldn’t build up because of planning rules, so the only option was to build down. Options for off-site collection storage were discounted early on because, after a few years, operating costs would have been much higher.
But we were also faced with the problem that escalating construction costs would make the project completely unaffordable if we didn’t put a stake in the ground and start. The building was at the end of its usable life, and we were facing a potential scenario of closing parts of, or the whole building, to the public so that we could move the collection into safer storage.
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The taxidermied Indian elephant was trapped in the Museum attic after earthquake strengthening in the 1990s.
In 2022, the decision was made to proceed with the redevelopment at a cost of $205 million. Compromises had to be made to contain costs. Base-isolation of the Mountfort buildings was removed from the plans. These had been strengthened in the 1990s and, at the time, were the strongest of all the Museum buildings, at 70% of code.
By then, the Museum had secured $125 million of the funding. To mitigate the risk, the project was divided into discrete stages that could be contracted separately within committed funding. This ensured that we didn’t commit to any work that we couldn’t afford.
Thanks to our funders
We’re grateful to our local funding authorities for their ongoing support and capital investment in the redevelopment.
- Christchurch City Council
- Hurunui District Council
- Selwyn District Council
- Waimakariri District Council
Our thanks also to central Government for funding from Greater Christchurch Regeneration contingency funding and the Regional Culture and Heritage Fund, and to the Lotteries Grant Board.
We appreciate the donations we’ve received from individuals and organisations who share our vision for the new Canterbury Museum.
2020
The Need for Change