“The boxes were popping off the shelves like popcorn.” This is what a friend of a friend told us about the 2011 earthquake. He was standing in a warehouse when the 6.3 magnitude quake started to tear Christchurch apart. He stood and watched as boxes of camping equipment suddenly took on lives of their own.

I’m from Ohio, so I have trouble understanding the concept of earthquakes. I cannot, for the life of me, imagine what it must be like to watch boxes pop off shelves like popcorn. In fact, when I heard that story, I was standing in the very same warehouse and the shelves looked pretty stable. The boxes looked heavy and not at all like popcorn kernels. That’s the thing about Christchurch–even three years later, the evidence of the earthquake is so etched into the landscape that you find yourself inevitably reevaluating your idea of solid ground.

Everything in Christchurch is under construction. Okay, not quite everything, but almost everything. The earthquake effectively leveled the central business district (or the CBD, as it’s called in NZ), killing 185 people and leaving the city in ruins. It’s one of those natural disasters that the rest of the world manages to forget about in a few months, even though the damage will take years (decades, in this case) to counteract.

But rebuild they will, using state of the art technology and the particular brand of Kiwi ingenuity that goes something like “hey, we have a lot of shipping containers, let’s make a mall out of them.” And so the Restart Mall in Christchurch is indeed made out of shipping containers and it is a beautiful splash of color and activity in a the bizarre, desolate landscape that is the CBD.

I think these photos do a good job of showing what a walk around the CBD is like today, three years post-earthquake: there are abandoned parking garages, collapsing buildings held up by shipping containers, chain link fencing and “danger do not enter” signs. There are also beautiful murals, children racing around on scooters, tourists posing with bushes manicured to look like penguins and gardens designed by third graders. It is, like I said earlier, desolate and strange, but it is also hopeful and surprisingly beautiful in its contrasts.

Have you been to Christchurch since the earthquake? What did you think? Share your thoughts below!