Museum Redevelopment Plans
Canterbury Museum is proposing a $195 million redevelopment of our Rolleston Avenue site. This is needed to protect the Museum’s heritage buildings and the 2.3 million objects in the collection, and to upgrade our visitor facilities for all of you to enjoy for years to come.
Currently only 1% of the Museum's collection can be displayed at any one time and some have never been seen by the public. Our proposed redevelopment will create a fit-for-purpose Museum and bring the visitor experience into the twenty-first century.
Last year we consulted with many different groups and received feedback from the public on our redevelopment plans and the concept designs for a new Museum created by Athfield Architects. The majority of feedback has been positive.
The Museum submitted a resource consent application for the proposed redevelopment to Christchurch City Council at the end of last year. We asked that it be publicly notified to ensure that people have a further opportunity to comment on the plans. Submissions on the resource consent application have now closed.
Below you will find images of our concept designs as well as some of the key documents that underpin the proposed redevelopment.
Building Conservation Plan
The Building Conservation Plan is designed to inform and guide decisions made by the Museum and the Christchurch City Council (as the Resource Management Act consenting authority) about the future management and redevelopment of the Museum to ensure that these are sensitive to the important heritage values of the place and its setting.
DownloadThe Project Brief
The project brief outlines the framework and principles underpinning future redevelopment and the vision for a redeveloped Museum, together with a detailed schedule of space, functional and technical requirements.
DownloadCultural Narrative
The narrative weaves together the cultural values, traditions and history of Ngāi Tūāhuriri in whose takiwā the Museum stands. It recognises the rights and guarantees provided under the Treaty of Waitangi and respects the mana of the local hapū, iwi and all peoples now resident in this land.
It provides a number of threads for the Museum to weave into the proposed redevelopment to recognise a shared history and an authentic bicultural approach based on the kawa and tikanga of mana whenua. It also informs how the Museum might best think about its connection and engagement with the whenua, the people and their stories and the pre-European history of this place.
Download