Cardboard Cathedral

New Zealand is a country that has been dealing with natural disasters for decades now. Earthquakes are among the most to hit this island country in the South Pacific. Earthquakes especially have devastating impacts to the city’s with the magnitude going over 7 SR. This of course leads to a need of action to react towards the loss and destruction of buildings damaged by the earthquakes. In 2011, Christchurch was hit by a 10-second magnitude 6.7 SR earthquake, which made quite a lot of damage due to the shallowness of its epicentre. Among the damaged property was the St John the Baptist Church which was completely demolished. This led to a solution by Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, who has designed buildings to be built out of cardboard. These buildings, though temporary, provide an easy and quick solution for helping refugees and disaster struck areas with the shelter and buildings they need. The lightness of cardboard brings ease of transport, whilst also bringing a new sense of space and material for the use of a building. This in turn creates an opportunity to design pre fabricated designs out of cardboard that could be built within minutes in a disaster area. This provides a new alternative approach to the fabric tents that have less rigidity in its built form. Materials used were 60cm diameter tubes, timber and metal structure. This new search of alternative materials is good for sustainability.