The Rebuild of the Knox Church

I took a short walk around my area to see the changes there were to the buildings going up and took a few good shots. Knox Church I have blipped a while ago and this one before the rebuild had started. It is very hard to get a good shot of the Church as the streets are so busy and cars keep getting in the way. That is why I thought a collage would give a all round view of how the work is progressing.

Here is a shot shot taken a few hours after the September 2010 earthquake and here is one I took in March 2011 after the February earthquake.

I also found a interesting video on youtube about positioning the first four buttress columns of the post earthquake Knox Church Christchurch on 14 December 2013.

The engineering of Knox Church rebuild is a world first. The type of engineering involved is understood to have never been used before and is considered a world first.

The concrete buttresses range from 6.3m to 8.3m high with the largest buttress weighing approximately 13 tonne.

The design of the buttresses is a collaboration between Wilkie and Bruce and Aurecon. Aurecon engineers proposed the idea of “rocking column” buttresses being used and completed the detail design of the buttresses. Wilkie and Bruce took the structural concept and added the architectural features to come up with the final look of the buttresses.

By using a low damage design approach used here with “rocking column” philosophy the building will be able to be reused quickly following an earthquake.

The post-tensioning keeps the load carrying capability and restores the column back to vertical after the earthquake. External dissipaters on the sides of the buttresses dissipate energy via yielding. All structural damage is therefore confined to these dissipaters which have been designed to be replaceable following an earthquake. Once the dissipaters are replaced the building would be back to its pre-earthquake strength.

A 250 tonne Titan crane is required to manage the huge weight of each buttresses that is what you see in the video on youtube I have given you link for.

For more information on the Knox Church.