Hayman Park Playground proceeds to NZIA’s 2025 Awards shortlist

The announcement of the 2025 New Zealand Architecture Awards shortlist on 31 July featured Hayman Park Playground in the Planning and Urban Design category - a further recognition for the work of Athfield Architects and Wraight + Associates (Wā).

The Hayman Park Playground in Manukau was recognised in 2024 with an NZILA Award of Excellence in the Play Spaces category. It was also an Auckland Architecture Awards Winner that year, with the following description:

Acting as an urban marker that’s visible from the city centre, the vertical arrangement is striking and inherently playful. At any one time it resembles a tower, a castle or a tree house. The parents’ stair winding up through the centre doesn’t dominate and the sense of adventure and opportunities to climb up the levels or cross between towers have been cleverly integrated. Safety and adventure are counterbalanced. The mix of colourful, tactile materials and the diverse scale of play elements in the tower and adjacent landscape offer accessibility to all ages.

All 61 shortlisted projects - selected from projects that have won a Local Architecture Award in their region during the past three years - will be visited by the jury, headed by Craig Moller, Director of Moller Architects, and including Beth Cameron from Makers of Architecture, Nicola Herbst of Herbst Architects, and Ilana Freadman from Freadman White Architects in Melbourne, Australia. Their tour begins 11 August.

In speaking to the Planning and Urban Design category, jury convenor Craig Moller commented it was an interesting category because:

… it deals with projects which might not necessarily, strictly be building. One of the projects in the category is the urban streetscape in Dunedin and (turning) that into a shared space, so there’s no building as such but it’s clearly a work of architecture and a piece of urban design.

Winners of the New Zealand Architecture Awards will be announced at the annual award event on 20 November in Ōtautahi Christchurch at Te Pae Christchurch Convention Centre.

Its 12 categories are: Commercial Architecture (5 projects), Education (6), Enduring Architecture (3), Heritage (5), Hospitality (2), Housing (14), Housing – Alterations and Additions (5), Housing – Multi Unit (4), Interior Architecture (3), Planning & Urban Design (3), Public Architecture (5) and Small Project Architecture (6).

Background information

Awards, Playgrounds, #Around-the-motuStephen Olsen