Sydenham: What's Left, What Will Go, What's Gone and What Will Rise in It's Place.

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

People ask me why so many buildings in Christchurch are so badly damaged that they can no longer be repaired:  my answer is that people can only make a building as safe as  they possibly can with the available technology of the day, and that expecting the buildings to stay intact when a large earthquake hits is really too much to ask: better we just have to require that they stay up long enough for people to be evacuated safely.

That so many buildings managed to stay upright in their extremely broken states can be counted as a kind of “success” i.e. at least the death toll wasn’t  in the thousands or tens of thousands as it might well have been without a decent building code and solid engineering.

Sadly the damage that many buildings sustained means that controlled implosions to bring them down aren’t possible, because controlled implosions necessitate cutting support columns and planting the explosives in strategic places,  something only possible if the structure is not in an already weakened state.

Add to that mix a daily dose of aftershocks and it’s clear that the “nibbler method” where buildings are slowly dismantled from the top down by crane,  is the only way, no matter how slow or tedious that method is.

In Sydenham lots of buildings suffered irreparable damage and are now gone…

Today’s post is one that wonders about the fate of Sydenham… what’s left, what will go, what’s gone and what will rise in it’s place. Let’s take a look…

Top photo is on the left hand side of the street of the third photo.

(photograph © Thanks Google Street View)

(photograph © Thanks Google Street View)

The following building used to be famous, not for the building itself but for what used to be on top of it… a mega huge fibreglass Kiwi, icon and logo of the Kiwi bacon company (Sadly the fiberglass Kiwi has been gone for years, so it’s not on the  Google street view image)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Thanks Google Street View)

…a little further down the road this mural has been added to a back wall of one of the remaining rear buildings….

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

looking (south) back at the next block…

(photograph © Thanks Google Street View)

and one further….

(photograph © Thanks Google Street View)

(photograph © Thanks Google Street View)

(photograph © Thanks Google Street View)

(photograph © Thanks Google Street View)

(photograph © Thanks Google Street View)

(photograph © Thanks Google Street View)

Opposite Sydenham Bakery…

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

and a little way down the road…

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

And pretty much the entire Lane Walker Rudkin “complex”of buildings… before: (yes, almost all of them)

(photograph © Thanks Google Street View)

Now….

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

And all around more of the same…

(photograph © Kiwidutch)