Following the magnitude 7.1 Greendale earthquake on 4 September, 2010 and the magnitude 6.3 Lyttelton aftershock on 22 February, 2011 (which caused severe damage to the Christchurch CBD, the Eastern and Southern suburbs, the Port Hills and Lyttelton), the Department of Building and Housing (DBH) have imposed modifications to increase the seismic coefficient from Z=0.22 to Z=0.3 and the Return Period Factor at Serviceability Limit State (SLS) from Rs = 0.21 to Rs=0.33.  While these changes to the seismic coefficient were put into effect the Christchurch City Council (CCC), Capital Programme Group (CPG) were in the process of tendering a new Council facility; the Aranui Library. This change led to a redesign of the foundations under a different performance criteria and a review of the structural capacities with consideration to the additional seismic forces. This paper will present the Aranui Library as a case study showing changes to the construction methodology to meet the new DBH modifications and identify the increase in cost that these changes imply. But also investigate different foundation options designed with performance levels to maintain the life cost of a building through high performance structural design for specific seismic conditions.