Apple founder Steve Jobs was an interesting man. I’ve been reading his fascinating authorised biography. It reveals a man obsessively concerned with design details, able to produce beautiful things and very hard to work with. He would have made a great architect. His long-suffering staff came up with a phrase to explain his strange mix of charisma, persuasion and ambitious drive. If you found yourself agreeing with Jobs that something impossible could be done on an even-less-probable deadline, you were said to be caught in his “reality distortion field”. It was a line from Star Trek that caught on and was used to explain Jobs’ inimitable management style. Such was his force of will that he could distort reality itself to achieve his goals and drag everyone along with him.

Here in Christchurch, the battle over the earthquake-damaged Anglican cathedral has reminded me of the reality distortion field. The city is divided over the future of the Christ Church Cathedral. One half of the city wants to restore it, the other wants to knock it down. It is one of those good, old-fashioned scraps the city loves so much. There was a scrap over a proposed new building in the historic Arts Centre, there was scrap over Ian Athfield’s proposed extension of the Canterbury Museum and there was a scrap years ago when the mayor proposed a new road through Hagley Park. What can I say? Christchurch doesn’t take change very well.

As you probably know, the Anglican diocese has decided to largely demolish the historic cathedral, leaving walls only about two to three metres high. Anglican leaders say the cathedral is too unsafe and damaged to restore, a host of engineers from around the world says the cathedral could easily be restored. This is where the distortion field kicks in.

For a start, Anglican leaders refuse to describe the demolition of the cathedral as demolition. A link on the Anglican diocese website reads “Christ Church Cathedral not to be demolished’’. That sounds like they are not knocking it down, right? No. When you click through, a new headline reads “Christ Church Cathedral to be lowered’’. Rather than the word demolition, Anglican leaders prefer the word ‘lowered’. “The Christchurch Cathedral will be carefully deconstructed down to a level of approximately two to three metres’’ the press release states. I watched the remains of the cathedral spire being ‘lowered’. It involved a huge pair of mechanical jaws on a crane pulling the masonry to the ground with a shudder of dust. I think the average person would describe that as demolition. Then there is the world tour that Anglican leaders are taking in search of inspiration for a new cathedral. Architects from Warren and Mahoney, along with Bishop Victoria Matthews, are visiting 12 cathedrals around the world. The itinerary is interesting.

On the list is Coventry Cathedral in England. This 14th-century cathedral was comprehensively lowered by the German Luftwaffe in 1940. A burnt-out shell was all that remained, with just the spire and exterior walls surviving the bombing. The ruins were preserved and a modern cathedral designed by Basil Spence was completed next door in the early 1960s. It’s a unique piece of 20th-century architecture, but not ideal inspiration for Christcurch. To begin with, the Christ Church Cathedral is standing largely intact in the city square. I can look at it each morning from my office window when I make a cup of tea. The back of the building looks straight-roofed and proud, unlike the battered front with its demolished, or lowered, spire and shattered rose window.

It is by no means a burnt-out shell. Engineers differ over the level of damage to the cathedral but, from certain angles the cathedral looks relatively unscathed. There it sits in Cathedral Square, quietly contradicting this reality distortion drive.

The cathedral leaders will also visit the Cathedral of Christ the Light by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill in Oakland, California. This modern cathedral is the first to be entirely constructed in the 21st century. It replaced an 1893 cathedral that was demolished after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. There was great debate over the future of the cathedral after the ‘89 ‘quake. The reported cost of restoring the cathedral was $8 million, but cathedral leaders said it was too dangerous to fix, opted for demolition and built a brand-new cathedral for more than $100 million. Unlike Coventry, that story sounds eerily familiar.

One thing is for sure, the divisive debate over the Christ Church Cathedral will make it very tough for the architect appointed to design a new one. It is perhaps one of the most important and thorny commissions in New Zealand history. It will require an architect with charisma, leadership, extraordinarily persuasive powers and attention to detail: an architect capable of taking on the divisive disputes and reality distortion fields set like traps around the cathedral. This will be an architect who cares obsessively about design details and is prepared to fight for them, who is able to persuade a divided people about the power of their vision and who can then deliver something beautiful, which we didn’t realise we needed but now can’t do without. Someone like Steve Jobs.