Te Pae Convention Centre | Christchurch's Regeneration Project

It’s unusual to find a convention centre in the centre of a city: they’re more often built on large plots out of town. But Te Pae – the name means “gathering place” in the Māori language – is deliberately placed right in the heart of Ōtautahi Christchurch, as an anchor for the regeneration of New Zealand’s second city after the devastation of the 2011 earthquake.

“It’s easy to forget the scale of the loss, but 80% of the central city was demolished,” says Lizzy Pearson, project director at Rau Paenga, the company established to deliver infrastructure projects for the government. “Getting people back into the city was one of the paramount drivers.”

Te Pae was conceived as a “boutique” facility, she explains, relatively small as convention centres go, but perfectly formed. “Because it’s not the biggest, there had to be something different about it, or it wouldn’t be able to compete. It needed a ‘wow’ factor. The brief was to create a beautiful building that was completely unique to Christchurch – that couldn’t be anywhere else in the world.”

Location

Christchurch, New Zealand

Client

Rau Paenga Ltd: Crown Infrastructure Delivery (formerly Ōtākaro Ltd)

Architect

Woods Bagot in association with Warren and Mahoney

Project Status

Completed in December 2021

Certifications

5 Star Green Star rating and Toitū enviromark gold certification

Awards

NZ Commercial Property Awards 2022 and Qualmark Gold Sustainable Tourism Business Award 2022

Christchurch’s heritage is reflected throughout the 3,850 capacity centre, from the wraparound, herringbone-tiled facade that echoes Canterbury’s braided rivers, to the ceremonial entranceway inspired by the cross-beam apex of the traditional Ngāi Tahu meeting house, to the artworks that animate its human-scale spaces.

But the building is not only special because of how it looks: it is highly flexible, resilient and sustainable, and the engineering that underpins it is just as impressive, if less visible. WSP was a key part of the team from the start of the project, responsible for mechanical, electrical and specialist services, fire engineering, acoustics and technology systems. We also worked with the New Zealand Green Building Council to develop a custom Green Star rating tool for convention centres as part of this project.

Since Te Pae opened in December 2021, it has proved a resounding success, not only with the growing number of visitors to the city, but with residents too. Rau Paenga hoped that the convention centre would bring NZ$60m of economic benefits to the city annually; in 2023 it is set to deliver NZ$100m. “It has well exceeded expectations,” says Pearson. “It’s not just the big hotel corporations that benefit – it’s local restaurants, taxi firms, even barbers. It truly does impact the city at all levels, and it’s been hugely beneficial for the recovery.”

Te Pae is a truly beautiful building that represents something really meaningful for Christchurch.

Lizzy Pearson Project Director, Rau Paenga

What sets Te Pae apart?

Nowhere to hide

Te Pae is a dream for selfie snappers and professional photographers alike – there’s no bad angle to capture it, neither from any of the four ground-level facades, or from the taller buildings that surround it. All of its backstage operations are cleverly hidden from view, as is the plant on its roof.

Whereas most convention centres have very large back-of-house areas and loading areas, this wasn’t an option – Te Pae sits on a central site at the heart of town, bordered by the Cathedral Square and the new Ōtākaro/Avon Riverwalk as part of a reinvigorated streetscape. “That was a really big design constraint,” says Pearson. “It would have been cheaper not to hide everything, but the whole aim was to create a building that’s beautiful from every side, and looks just as good from above as it does from ground level.”

Two convention centres in one

Christchurch is a relatively small city in global terms, so to work for the community, Te Pae had to be flexible and able to cater for smaller functions as well as big-ticket events. In fact, it can hold two completely separate events simultaneously. The exhibition hall, auditorium, banquet hall and meeting rooms can all be divided into smaller spaces, with walls that can be easily moved without the need for machinery. For the design team, this meant working to three different scenarios, which had implications for every aspect of the building’s functioning, from the sizing of the central plant to the fire engineering to the acoustics. “The flexibility of the building is quite extraordinary,” says Pearson. “You can have two concerts in the same room, just separated by an operable wall.”

flexible floor space (sqm)

28,000 28,000

maximum capacity

3,850 3,850

Annual economic benefit (nz$)

100M 100M

Mind the seismic gap

Earthquake resilience was integral to Te Pae from the very beginning: the structure is split into three parts connected by seismic joints, to allow it to flex without major damage. WSP’s innovative building services design applies this principle to the systems too. The pipework and ducting is arranged to minimize the number of times it crosses the gaps, and all the distribution cabling is sunk within the giant floating raft upon which Te Pae is constructed, with the power supply for each space rising up through the floor. This means that even if the wet, silty soil beneath the building loses strength during an earthquake, the centre and its essential systems will remain stable and continue to function, no matter how hard the ground shakes.

One platform to rule them all

The Te Pae experience is underpinned by a complex array of systems that enable it to host multiple events flawlessly and keep capacity crowds as comfortable as intimate gatherings. WSP’s technology specialists integrated them into a combined building management platform, which brings together real-time data on mechanical and electrical services, as well as audio-visual, converged communications and broadcast infrastructure. This enables operational teams to control every aspect of the convention centre from a central system, analyzing performance and making adjustments from a single interface. WSP has also been carrying out post-occupancy tuning, to ensure everything continues to function as it should.