Work being done by the University of Canterbury's Centre for Earthquake Resilience has had the tick of approval from government.

Quakecore has become a Centre of Research Excellence, and will receive $21 million in funding over the next five years.

Associate Professor Brendon Bradley says the recognition will go a long way to helping the centre secure more funding from other providers.

"This enables the staff to make a fair change and engage more with those other different funding agencies, because the $21 million that we're getting is not enough to solve what is sort of a $100 billion problem."

Quakecore aims to create building solutions that are cheap to create, but also hold their own in earthquakes.