Fifteen teams of architects from New Zealand, Britain, Singapore and Australia on Friday began a challenge to redesign Christchurch city.
The event organised by the city council will help to develop the draft plan for the inner-city rebuild.
The teams have been given guidelines for the central city plan, and also have to work with the themes that came out of the recent Share an Idea campaign, in which tens of thousands of ideas from the public were submitted online.
The teams are to work on one of five sites in the city and have until midday on Sunday to complete their designs.