Megan Wraight's legacy is impressive
Megan Wraight’s cheeky smile, endless enthusiasm, vision and intelligence will be sorely missed. The award-winning New Zealand landscape architect, who died on 31 August, was a friend and colleague to our directors. Read the Stuff obituary here.
Megan was always excited
In Wellington, Megan was behind such landmark public spaces as Waitangi Park, Pukeahu National War Memorial Park, Cobblestone Park and the Wellington Waterfront redevelopment.
HMOA director Max Herriot says Megan’s boundless energy and determination resulted in the creation of these outstanding public projects for the city, “Look what she has left us,” he says, “Megan was always battling to make a difference, she was the consummate professional; a perfectionist and the ultimate collaborator”.
“Megan was always excited,” says Christchurch director Duval O’Neill, “Like us, she was very focused on getting the detail right. There was a real synergy when we worked together.”
Duval worked with Megan on the award-winning Clifton Hill House in Sumner and, for a while, they had neighbouring office spaces in Cambridge Tce.
“On the Clifton Hill project (major additions to a modernist house), Megan challenged us to allow the landscape to tell the story,” Duval says.
“She was also hands-on with the project, she got stuck in with the planting. Eight years later, our clients are still enjoying the result of her vision with over an acre of terraced garden and abundant birdlife".
Megan was always about the big idea
Megan played a key role in getting the Christchurch coastal pathway underway.
“Like Ath (Sir Ian Athfield, who she worked with), Megan was always about the big idea,” says Duval, “For her, landscape wasn’t about boundaries, she had a wider response that blurred the margins between public and private. She was all about getting people to pass through these spaces.”
Look what she has left us! Megan was always battling to make a difference, she was the consummate professional; a perfectionist and the ultimate collaborator," Max Herriot
Wraight & Associates
Megan completed a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture at Melbourne’s RMIT University, graduating in 1992. In 1998, she established Megan Wraight Landscape Architects, now Wraight & Associates.
In 2006 she was awarded the International Federation of Landscape Architects award and in 2013, she received the Arts Foundation of New Zealand Laureate Award – the first landscape architect to do so.