FESTA - Festival of Transitional Architecture

Our Trust presents a unique, free, public event: the Festival of Transitional Architecture - FESTA - in Christchurch every Labour Weekend.

FESTA draws tens of thousands into the city centre for its a diverse programme bulging with creative urban renewal projects, events and community-based activities that celebrates and develops the local transitional culture and draws in national and international participants.

Our inaugural event in 2012 opened with LUXCITY, a city made from light for one night by 350 design and architecture students from across New Zealand. This event made history as it returned the largest number of people (30,000) into the city since the 2011 earthquakes.

We presented FESTA annually in 2012, 2013 and 2014. In 2015, FESTA became biennial. That same year, CTAT established Te Putahi – Christchurch centre for architecture and city-making - a year-round programme of architecture events and projects developed to grow people and places together. FESTA is now presented and produced by Te Putahi and remains the biggest event in the Te Putahi programme. We presented FESTA in this new cycle in 2016.

Heading into our fifth FESTA, we’re proud to have attracted over 1,200 student participants from 11 design/architecture schools around New Zealand and Australia, engaged over 150 volunteers, and welcomed over 65,000 attendees from across the local community and further afield.

Our fifth event will happen Labour Weekend 2018, from 19-22 October. Watch out for our headline event, FEASTA!, on 20 October!