Police station demolition to become art

TRENT HILES

RARE LOOK INSIDE: Tearing out the cells at the former Christchurch police station will create some noise.

The demolition of the former Christchurch central police station is being recorded in unusual detail and the results will become works of art.

Photographers, videographers and sound artists have been capturing the strip-out of the 13-storey building since July, project leader Trent Hiles said. They will continue capturing data through the building's implosion, likely in March, and the final clearance of the site. The imagery and sound will then be combined for multimedia exhibitions.

"The project is, in part, a homage to the more than 1200 buildings within Christchurch's CBD that have been demolished post-quakes," Hiles said. "While there are images and video footage of the exteriors of buildings coming down, no-one, to our knowledge, has recorded what goes on within the walls in preparation for complete demolition."

The police station was specially chosen for the project because it was home to heartbreak and sorrow, relief and joy, confession and denial, justice and injustice.

"It was a conduit to the community, not good for some, but a place to get a gun licence or recover a bike for others," Hiles said.

The building's "architectural merit has long been debated", Hiles said, but it had some importance given its Brutalist form and architectural pedigree as a Ministry of Works design. The effort is named after the building's address, the 48 Hereford Street Project.

Sound artists have used contact microphones to pick up subtle vibrations created by the strip-out. In one case, sound from the 12th floor travelled along pipes to the ground floor, Hiles said. "It was ghostly."

Project members plan extensive recordings of the building coming down under controlled explosions.

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Police station demolition to become art