Something Martin may be interested in....

[Nick]

Hey Martin, you may recognize some of this from your time here as a pimply faced student. This is all going on outside the windows of our workshop. They've demolished the Science lecture block (the big empty space for those other than Martin ) and this video shows Old Maths coming down to make room for the new Science and Innovation building that's going up. The new building will house all of the sciences, including Geology. Von Haast will eventually come down as well so a piece of your past will be gone forever Time lapse taken from Rutherford (the building we are in) which may come down or it may not! The Uni is having a legal scrap with the insurance company over that one!

youtu.be/

They are busy removing 2 metres of the old ground at the moment and bringing in fill to build a compact base for the new 1 metre thick foundation, which sounds like it's basically just going to be a slab/raft of concrete so that the whole structure/building will move as one in the event of another major earthquake.

Also a live cam feed link to bookmark if you want to watch the new building going up (concrete pouring supposed to start early next year)
http://rsiccam1.canterbury.ac.nz

[kiwigeo]

Thanks Nick....took a while to work out the orientation of everything. Wow.....sounds like those buildings sustained some serious damage during the quakes. So they're going to bung all the sciences in one building??? That must be one hell of a huge building or maybe they're going to prune back the size of many departments?

A raft foundation is perfect...during the next big shake the whole building will drift down Ilam Road to the Bush Inn where you can have a few drinks before oblivion!!

[Nick]

So they're going to bung all the sciences in one building??? That must be one hell of a huge building or maybe they're going to prune back the size of many departments?

Second option unfortunately The building itself is going to be only four storeys high and will house research and teaching labs & student work rooms. The stupid thing is (and what pisses many off) is that there is an open plan coffee/food shop (yet another on campus, this would make 7 of them!) which will take up 75% of the ground floor area! They haven't allowed for supervisors offices and along with them, tech services, such as myself, will stay in Rutherford until they decide what to do with it (Uni wants to demolish and build a new smaller one, insurance company only want to pay for a repair). I can only speak for Chemistry but we will have had our floor space reduced by 2/3rds on what we currently have in the new building! We are told that we just have to "work smarter" by way of an excuse, teaching labs are to be multidisciplinary, chemistry roll out the gear they need for a class, pack it away at the end then biological sciences do the same and so on . We had a chance to build a marvelous facility that would have been fully future proofed, instead we'll have a building that's barely going to be fit for purpose, reason..... Engineering (which seems to be the focus of the University these days and one which the vice chancellor very much appears to endorse) got the lion's share of the funding.
I like the idea of relocating to Bush Inn though

[Kev3]

Sad but true Nick, but it's the way things are going in my neck of the woods and a lot of other uni's.
Plenty of space for retail outlets, open plan "student experience" zones and whatever other buzz word is going round at the moment - little in the way of practical space to do the job and give real hands on teaching / research. Who needs it ? You can do it all on-line and virtual can't you ?

... But the geologist in me likes the idea of building that takes you to the pub

[kiwigeo]

Ive lost faith in Christchurch's ability to make good from bad after the quakes. So many opportunities are being squandered. Millions being spent on a bldi sports stadium rather than on more essential basic public facilities like an efficient public transport system

[Nick]

Ive lost faith in Christchurch's ability to make good from bad after the quakes. So many opportunities are being squandered. Millions being spent on a bldi sports stadium rather than on more essential basic public facilities like an efficient public transport system

You and me both Martin, it's all money being spent window dressing whilst the interior of the shop is still a bloody mess. They were saying the other day that there's not enough money to repair the 'horizontal' infrastructure (Sewers) now as they've already spent the guesstimated amount they budgeted for so are now stating that it will be twenty years before some areas of town are repaired!