Mt Pleasant Community Centre

When the Christchurch earthquakes destroyed the existing Mt Pleasant Community Centre, it also destroyed theories of existing construction techniques. This raised the need to think deeply about how we live on these shakey islands. Rebuilding meant exploring construction methods and how these could be utilised to create strong, safe, lean architecture to help pave a new future. Could this see a critical shift in design approach by combining lightweight structures with sustainable materials, digital fabrication, and 3D modeling BIM (Building Information Technology) direct to prefabricated manufacture? Taking lessons from nature we searched for clues to see how we could change the way we build. The nearby estuary, full of crustaceans such as crabs and local shellfish such as pipi and tuatua, inspired the concept design, resulting in the dramatic, folded wave ‘shell structure’ of the new build. “Shell architecture is super sustainable being light, strong and material efficient within a compact envelope”. The prefabricated approach to the design kept the number of building packages to three, and contributed to a reduction in the onsite waste. Only the foundations and interior fit out walls were not part of the prefabrication process.