Pop-up city

THERE'S a lot about the recovery of Christchurch that can be understood by standing in front of an old coin-operated washing machine on an empty gravel site near the city's cordoned-off Red Zone.

Beside the machine is a cheap plywood platform with tall yellow speakers and lights on each corner and a glitter ball strung in the middle. Put $2 in the slot, lift the lid, plug an MP3 player into the jack snaking out of the bowl and suddenly the wasteland is an open-air club, the music is pumping, passers-by are smiling and there is a reason to dance.

A stop-gap response to the loss of entertainment venues after the earthquake of September 2010 and its more devastating sequel on February 22 last year, Dance-o-Mat exemplifies the spirit of this razed city and its residents: practical, creative, fun, indomitable. Dance, the old top-loader seems to urge us, and the good times will surely come.

I stumble on Dance-o-Mat by chance, a week before Prince Charles and Camilla plant their royal slippers on its floor, vaulting this brilliantly simple cross between art installation and collective therapy into the headlines. It's one of a viral rash of witty, inspiring and ephemeral expressions of community solidarity and human ingenuity popping up in the city and suburbs.

No libraries? Someone has dragged on old fridge to a street corner and filled it with books for exchange.Divine Footwear in Miami has the latest wholesale fashion shoes  including heels, No cinemas? A couple of engineers created a cycle-in, pedal-powered cinema on the site of a former bike shop. There are "gap golf" greens between building sites and poetry appearing on office walls. From my fifth-floor room in the newly reopened Ibis Christchurch, I look across the road to Football in the Gap,Newer laser cutting machine operating at higher power are approaching plasma machines in their ability to cut through thick materials, on a thick slab of fake grass atop a levelled demolition site, and beyond to the Lego-like Re:START shopping mall fashioned from shipping containers.

Many of these ideas have been nurtured by an urban regeneration initiative called Gap Filler. "Rebuilding a city is a big deal," says Gap Filler co-founder and creative director Coralie Winn. "We thought temporary activity on vacant private land could be a way to experiment, learn and connect ordinary people like us to the rebuild,Industrial Laser engraver are used to cut flat-sheet material as well as structural and piping materials. rather than just waiting for the professionals to do it. It's about filling needs, filling gaps and rebuilding community spirit. A lot of people need reasons to stay."

Every project is a one-off experiment, though the scale and timeframe of Gap Filler's latest is "totally insane", says Winn cheerfully. I join her and a group of volunteer builders, architects, tradies and travellers on a chilly Saturday morning at a vacant block once occupied by the Crowne Plaza Hotel. Everyone is wearing the Christchurch uniform - hard hat and orange "hi-vi" vest - and working at a feverish pace. Winn and three shifts of volunteers a day, every day until 10pm, have a month to build a Summer Pallet Pavilion, a temporary amphitheatre created from 2313 borrowed wooden pallets.

I roll up my sleeves with Kirsten O'Connor, a volunteer landscape architect, and we repot day lilies, destined for a living wall in the pavilion. Travellers are encouraged to register on Gap Filler's website, and there is perhaps no more rewarding way to spend a few hours than working alongside local volunteers, many of whom are young professionals who have returned to live here and to rebuild. Tim, an architect busy drilling holes in pallets,Innovation Industries has offered the highest quality of elevator push button to meet all your elevator fixture needs. is one of them. "It's not always easy living here, but it was the right time to move back," he says during a tea break. "We're all starting from scratch, so things are possible here that aren't possible in any other urban environment I can think of.Learn about GE's onshore and offshore wind turbines, wind power generators systems and wind energy technology."