17 Apr Te Whare o Rehua Sarjeant Gallery Earthquake Strengthening Work Honoured with Prestigious National Seismic Resilience Award
MEDIA RELEASE
Wednesday 16 April 2025
Te Whare o Rehua Sarjeant Gallery in Whanganui is proud to announce that the seismic strengthening work completed on the 105-year-old Sarjeant Gallery heritage building by Clendon Burns & Park Ltd has been awarded the John Hollings Seismic Resilience in Practice Award by the New Zealand Society for Earthquake Engineering (NZSEE).
This prestigious national honour recognises excellence in the practical application of seismic engineering to protect New Zealand’s built heritage and public infrastructure.
The award acknowledges the outstanding seismic strengthening undertaken as a key part of the Sarjeant Gallery redevelopment project, which has transformed the historic Category I heritage building into a state-of-the-art facility that meets modern resilience standards while preserving its architectural and cultural legacy.
The seismic strengthening was led by Clendon Burns & Park Ltd, Consulting Civil and Structural Engineers, based in Wellington, whose expertise and leadership were pivotal to the successful delivery of the project. Their work ensured that the integrity and character of the iconic heritage structure were preserved while achieving the highest standards of earthquake resilience.
“We are honoured to receive this award from the NZSEE,” said Philip Yong, Director of Clendon Burns & Park Ltd. “This recognition highlights the incredible work and dedication of everyone involved in the project—from our engineers and design team to the many supporters who believed in the importance of preserving this iconic taonga.”
Redevelopment Project Director Gaye Batty said, “A key challenge for Clendon Burns & Park Ltd was balancing seismic strengthening with heritage integrity. The Ministry for Culture and Heritage initially required base isolation, but this would have necessitated the removal of the Sarjeant Gallery’s original interior plaster features and involved significant alterations to the gallery.”
Instead, an alternative post-tensioned strand system was adopted, providing seismic resilience while preserving the heritage fabric of Te Whare o Rehua Sarjeant Gallery. Central to the post-tensioned strand system was the use of 300 stainless steel bars up to 12m long installed vertically through the old masonry walls, then pulled into tension and anchored in new concrete capping beams at the top, and new concrete foundations in the basement.
Working with historical drawings created additional challenges when the actual conditions differed from expectations, and the construction team discovered that the original builders had followed the contours of the sand dune on which the gallery was built, rather than digging foundations to the depths shown on the drawings.
With existing foundation depths a lot higher than anticipated, there had to be extensive underpinning of the existing foundations to allow the new strengthening foundations to be taken down to the required depth to form the new mechanical plant room in the existing basement of the gallery.
The NZ Society for Earthquake Engineering (NZSEE) John Hollings Seismic Resilience in Practice Award is an award for earthquake engineering in practice. The win also recognises the work of the architects Warren and Mahoney, and the contractor McMillan & Lockwood, it also celebrates the strong and successful collaboration between architecture, engineering and implementation.
To read the full submission to the NZSEE made by Clendon Burns &Park Ltd, click here. Please view the corresponding poster created by Clendon Burns & Park below.
For media inquiries, please contact:
Jaki Arthur, Communications Lead at Te Whare o Rehua Sarjeant Gallery on jaki.arthur@sarjeant.org.nz or 027 577 4923
or
Philip Yong, Director of Clendon Burns & Park Ltd on philipy@cbp.co.nz or +64 4 495 1341
Notes to Editors
John Hollings was a founding member of Beca Carter Hollings & Ferner, (now BECA) and was the pioneer of Earthquake Engineering in NZ. He was given an honorary doctorate for his design approach in seismic engineering.
Te Whare o Rehua Sarjeant Gallery at Pukenamu Queen’s Park in the centre of Whanganui is one of New Zealand’s oldest purpose-built galleries. It first opened in 1919 and has a nationally significant permanent collection.
Reopened in November 2024 after a decade closed and an extensive redevelopment, the iconic Sarjeant Gallery has been earthquake strengthened, restored and extended with the addition of a modern new wing called Te Pātaka o Tā Te Atawhai Archie John Taiaroa, the design of which has been arrived at as the result of a co-design project between architects Warren and Mahoney and Te Kahui Toi o Tupoho.
Since opening to the public on 6 November 2024 the gallery has welcomed 68,000 visitors.
Te Whare o Rehua Sarjeant Gallery now spans more than 4,500 sqm and now features ten exhibition spaces, a family room, a reading room and library, a classroom, retail space, a café, and publicly accessible event and meeting rooms. Additionally, the facility also includes a climate-controlled storage area for its nationally significant permanent collection of works, a photographic studio and workshops.
Te Whare o Rehua Sarjeant Gallery is situated in Whanganui, a designated UNESCO City of Design. The gallery was named one of the most anticipated cultural openings of 2024 in both Timeout Travel Magazine and National Geographic.
The Sarjeant Gallery Redevelopment Project is a partnership between Whanganui District Council, Whanganui Iwi, Central Government, and supporters and benefactors, including large and small private donors and trusts, with support from the Sarjeant Gallery Trust.
Te Whare o Rehua Sarjeant Gallery is a cultural facility of Whanganui District Council.