Much of our understanding of architecture lies in our experience of it. To engage in the built environment we visit, use and occupy it. 

The image library celebrates a breadth of creative work from the field of architecture. Examining bodies of knowledge including processes of research, documentation and creative speculation that are primarily out of public view. This work illustrates the essential role of the image as an alternative account of architecture and the built environments we inhabit, as they change over time.

Exploring the ephemera of architecture, The image library includes drawings that might have sparked a building’s life and the photographs that record its final use. Workbooks depicting architect Pete Bossley’s daily acts of drawing over his five-decade long career and the enduring documentation of Christchurch’s urban landscape by photographer Tim J. Veling are shown alongside the speculative renderings of building adaptions by architect Raphaela Rose.

These works, with Samuel Harnett’s Ex Libris photographic series documenting the patina of student life in the months before the closure of three specialist libraries, point to the complex issues of how we value and sustain a spectrum of specialist knowledge. The image library also includes rare images of Canterbury architecture from the archives of Lesley and Peter Beaven, and George Lucking, which have been preserved and saved for future access by the care of local architects, their families and passionate supporters. 

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This exhibition has been made possible by support from The Warren Trust, Te Kāhui Whaihanga New Zealand Institute of Architects Canterbury Branch, Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, Common Architecture and Lesley Beaven.