Putahi Whakatatetonga – South Frame Public Realm transforms seven former industrial blocks on the edge of Christchurch’s city centre into a connected public realm network supporting the city’s renewal. Conceived as a landscape of living infrastructure rather than just open space, the 20,000sqm precinct establishes a framework for creative, educational and cultural growth within a recovering urban landscape.

The project responds to demolition voids, disrupted street networks and the need for social and ecological repair following the 2011 earthquakes. Our design strategy positioned landscape as the primary organising system - restoring continuity, embedding ecology and creating legible connections between neighbourhoods, institutions and defining a fine grain structure for emerging development.

Three interwoven spatial moves structure the precinct. ‘The Greenway’ forms a planted ecological spine that integrates site archaeology and social infrastructure into a layered urban garden. ‘The Lanes’ establish fine-grained north–south permeability, reconnecting blocks and supporting active frontages. ‘The Yards’ create a network of flexible destinations designed to host markets, performance and informal gathering, enabling cultural and economic activation over time.

Putahi Whakatatetonga now operates as connective civic tissue - stabilising urban form, catalysing creative enterprise and embedding ecological performance within an emerging city precinct. It demonstrates how landscape-led urbanism can guide regeneration not as embellishment, but as foundational structure.