Film about Whole House Reuse

We are delighted to share this stunning film by Julian Vares about Whole House Reuse. This tells some of the story of the project, of a home that would have otherwise gone to waste but was instead turned into hundreds of beautifully crafted artifacts.

Whole House Reuse involved the entire material of a single home, otherwise destined for waste, being deconstructed and transformed into beautiful and purposeful artefacts. Nearly 400 objects have been created by reusing every single piece of 19 Admirals Way, a 1920’s weatherboard home in New Brighton, Christchurch, which was scheduled for demolition in 2013. This celebrates design and craft as highly valuable tools that can address wasted resources.

Over 250 people from around New Zealand and the world have invented ways of reusing these resources and the result is a huge collection of objects from a delicately carved taonga puoro by master carver Brian Flintoff, to a finely crafted backyard studio by artist Nic Moon and architectural designer Lyn Russell. The exhibition showcased original works by some of the country’s finest designers and craftspeople, school children, students, retired experts, and community organisations like Kilmarnock Enterprises. 

The project culminated in an exhibition in the Special Exhibitions Hall at Canterbury Museum, Christchurch, New Zealand for 3 months from early June 2015. Over 120,000 people visited the exhibition and we have been amazed at how many of these visitors have talked about the degree of emotion in their experience of the exhibit. People particularly described the impact of seeing such a large volume and diversity of careful and creative work made from materials so often forgotten and discarded. We are thankful to Canterbury Museum for making this possible, and feel deeply heartened that this project has touched and inspired people towards a greater level of resourcefulness.