Maidstone Park Play Space

2022 Playground of the Year - Recreation Aotearoa

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The Maidstone Max Adventure Playground Renewal is an environment geared towards integrated play that encompasses a playground for all ages with accessible play options, a learner wheeled play area and pump track, retention of the existing Flying Fox, a large open hard paved concrete space with play features, basketball court, terraces, seating areas with utilities and a large skatepark with flow bowl and street skating environment. The design blurs the boundaries that commonly exist in play environments in New Zealand, bringing communities together through play interaction.

The playground contains a number of play features including a farm area with small towers, tunnels, seesaw, spinners, play cottage and stepping stone and log features. This leads onto a 'quarry' sand play area with spinner, sand table and sand play gravel pit. Further on we have the castle environment with a number of play features for a variety of age groups and users with disabilities that include swings, spinners, trampolines, rope and mat climbers, castles, carousel, mouse wheel, hammocks and other unique features. Last but not least is a musical environment with varied instruments.

The half court basketball area flows out towards a series of terraces for onlookers and street skaters, with a large hard paved area adjacent providing much needed space for informal play for wheeled and non wheeled activities. A large pump bump and volcano gives users something to experience as the space flows into two long corridors for younger and less experienced wheeled play users to hone their skills on smaller wheeled play features and a continuous strip of rollover, pump track elements.

The new skate park at Maidstone Park will house a large flow bowl with varying depths and forms containing steel and pool coping edges. This bowl surrounds the street skating environment that has grind rails, ledges, a pyramid and A-frame with turnaround quarterpipes either end. There is also a large skateable art feature that will have the name of the park running up it. Throughout the environments various shelters and utility areas exist that contain seating, picnic tables, barbeques, water fountains and rubbish bins.

RICH Landscapes is proud to be engaged in this development, involving new forms of integration in play spaces. We look forward to seeing the Upper Hutt community use this facility that will no doubt become a destination for people in the wider region.