Christchurch Peace Bell Pavilion wins national silver

The Peace Bell Pavilion at Christchurch Botanic Gardens was awarded a Silver at the BeST Design Awards in Auckland on Friday.

The Designers Institute of New Zealand's Silver award in the Spatial Design category adds to the three local awards the Pavilion garnered last week.

The Peace Bell Pavilion was designed by the Capital Programme Group of the Christchurch City Council for the New Zealand Peace Bell Association.

Designer Crispin Shurr (pictured) says the Peace Bell Pavilion was one of the two Silver awards in its category, the other going to the Stair Lantern at Victoria University of Wellington.

The New Zealand Memorial at Hyde Park Corner, London took out the Gold.

The Pavilion has also won for the Capital Programmes Group The Resene Local Award for Architecture and The Resene Colour Award, Canterbury branch category awards from the New Zealand Institute of Architects.

The New Zealand Concrete Society awarded the Group, previously called City Solutions, The Landscape Award with the citation: "This elegant piece of landscape architecture not only required concrete to be used innovatively but provides a most appropriate setting for celebrating a symbol of peace. Light weight concrete has been formed into a subtly detailed and penetrated slab. Its slender supporting structure impacts lightly on the landscape and avoids disturbing the surrounding areas."

Mr Schurr says he sought an interpretation of the Japanese pagoda while designing the Pavilion.

"We aimed to design the Pavilion as a modernist interpretation of a more traditional Asian vernacular," says Mr Schurr.

The Peace bell is anchored under a central circular perforation and above a shallow pool in a timber floor, both designed so as to show the bell in the best natural light and reflection.

An ingenious use of pumice (a light, porous, glassy lava) and cantilevering achieves the effect that the massive roof is light and suspended in mid-air.

This effect is further enhanced by the stainless steel supporting columns that reflect their surrounding and are almost invisible from a distance.

The stunning Pavilion houses a replica of the original World Peace Bell at the United Nations Headquarters in New York.

The Peace Bell is made from smelted coins and medals donated by 103 countries and was gifted to Christchurch in 2005 by the World Peace Bell Association

It stands at the focus of the Asian collection at the Botanic Gardens.

"The concept was a poetic description of balance, potential and human traits," says Mr Schurr. "The precarious balance of the whole, the massive weight of the slab on a tangled, disorganised array of individual threads, reminds us that in this peak oil, nuclear age, modern civilisation still remains precariously balanced, and that future world peace is still something worthy of contemplation."

The construction was undertaken by Craig McNabb and was commended by the NZIA jury as having "exceptional attention to detail and materiality".