Killer quake: Sir John Key reflects on NZ s darkest day
13 minutes to read
Sir John Key was Prime Minister when his hometown, Christchurch, was devastated in the February 22, 2011 earthquake. He was dropped into the still shaking, cracked chaos of New Zealand s darkest day . Ten years on, he reflects on those horrific first 24 hours, and how a rebuilt Garden City could become our own Silicon Valley. Kurt Bayer reports.
The meeting, high on the ninth floor of the Beehive paused to ride out the shaking. Everyone stopped talking, looking at each other. Once it stopped, discussion resumed.
But moments later, Prime Minister John Key s trusty chief of staff Wayne Eagleson stuck his head in the door.
GO NZ: An expert s guide to Christchurch s best buildings
28 Jan, 2021 03:30 AM
4 minutes to read
Turanga, Christchurch s central library, is an anchor project in Cathedral Square. Photo / ChristchurchNZ
NZ Herald
Architectural writer and editor
John Walsh gives his guide to the best buildings to look out for on a walk around Christchurch
All cities are to some extent intentional but Christchurch, far more than most cities, didn t just happen. It was conceived in England, in the middle of the 19th century, as an Anglican settlement centred on a cathedral, bordered by a park and laid out as a rectangular grid of streets awaiting the buildings that would inevitably occur as prosperity caught up with colonial ambition.