An old supermarket warehouse isn't your typical building for a school, but 12 years on from the Christchurch earthquake, a Catholic girls school is calling it home.
Marian College in Christchurch was devastated in the quake and ever since, students have been sharing other schools' sites.
But this week, they got a first look inside their new-to-them building, a former Foodstuffs' distribution warehouse in Papanui.
Original plans called for the warehouse to be demolished, but once inside, principal Mary-Lou Davidson said new ideas were hatched.
"We came inside and we saw the concrete and the steel and the roof and the structure was already there, and the idea kinda of grew, why would you send that to landfill when you could do something interesting here."
So do something interesting is what they did.
Jonathan Kennedy of Sheppard and Rout Architects said it was a once-in-a-lifetime project.
"We aren't aware of another one in the Southern Hemisphere."
The whole process had taken four to five years.
They had used engineered timber throughout the new classroom spaces to lighten the load on the foundations, as well as bring a "feeling of warmth to internal spaces".
The chapel was placed front and centre.
Marian College, which lost its campus in the 2011 quake, now has its own space after having to use other schools' buildings. (Source: 1News)
"As soon as you come through the entrance doors that is the first thing you see, it's a symmetrical chapel," Kennedy said.
There was an outdoor courtyard where the roof was pulled back.
Junior students are already settling in to their new school.
"I think the library is really cool, there's so many books in there and I'm like 'whoa, I don't remember that being in the old library'," year 10 student Briar Rotherham said.
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