Waitangi Park and Taranaki Wharf in collaboration with Athfield Architects

Waitangi Park created a benchmark for sustainable landscape design in the Wellington Region. The park's environmentally sustainable design and the water sensitive urban design strategy not only contributes to improved water quality but also contributes to the visual appeal of the park generating a unique character for the place.

Wraight + Associates pioneered water-sensitive landscape practices in New Zealand. WA-founder Megan Wraight was lead landscape architect on Wellington's iconic Waitangi Park, which, along with remediating site water, re-surfaces a long-buried city stream and treats this before its release into the harbour.

Megan has a special interest in the way cultural, historical and natural processes interact to shape the landscape in urban environments and the Taranaki Wharf redevelopment project in Wellington has reshaped the face of the capital.

Waitangi Park required a high level of civil engineering design for an innovative environmental design; including the raising and cleansing of the historic Waitangi stream (previously piped in the form of contaminated stormwater from across the city), and the on-site water harvesting to reuse the water for irrigation of the park.

Water Sensitive Urban Design has been central to the practice of Wraight + Associates. From streetscapes to large parks WA's projects have sought to sustainably manage surface water and mitigate pollutant runoff, in turn improving the health of water bodies and providing a unique expression of city ecologies.

Water Sensitive Urban Design's importance lies not just in slowing and cleaning storm water runoffs.

Water Sensitive Urban Design's techniques provide the opportunity to expose ecologies otherwise lost to urban environments and to elicit complex - often forgotten - cultural and historical relationships; bio-remediaton as place-based interpretation

Megan Wraight was a key figure in the 1997 masterplan team that developed the principles for connecting Wellington city back to its waterfront, developing a linked "necklace" of open spaces that would form a braided promenade around the inner harbour.