The Haye Playground, Mortar&Pestle Design, Southwark London, 2010

"After consulting with local residents, together we decided that a traditional play set, swing and slide was a little bit boring and unoriginal and instead built these abstract hills made of concrete and grass, where the children could run, jump and play. Local residents really liked this idea and unofficially called the park 'Teletubby Land'."

"The Haye" as the park is known, is in Southwark, London. The playground was designed and built by Richard Knowles, of Mortar&Pestle Studio, May Safwat and Diego Ulrich and of course the many local residents of the park.

An inspiring (and historically relevant...more on that later) design by a young studio from whom I'd like to see many more playgrounds!

London Playground Chat, Friday December 3

Thanks to playscapes friend Tim Gill, we'll be meeting next Friday from 12 - 2 at the German Gymnasium, Pancras Road, London N1C 4TB.

There is no charge (but also no lunch provided - though there will be teas & coffees). Thanks to Argent for providing the meeting room.   Afterwards, some of us will also be making our way to visit the Children's Play Information Service (the world's largest library on children's play, likely to soon be defunct due to goverment cutbacks) and then later to see the Snug play kit (pictured, a movable parts playground that preceded the recent hoopla over David Rockwell's Imagination Playground-in-a-box) in use at Gillett Square, Hackney.

Numbers are strictly limited so if you haven't already done so, please RSVP...I'd love to see you there!

Kennington Playscape, make-good, Hoxton, London, 2010

 

Make-good of London stepped in when the planning process for a new play area had become contentious.  A series of meetings with the estate's young people, in which they built their ideas out of cardboard at 1:1 scale, resulted in the concept of an activity course in which cubes of various sizes and materials offered "opportunities to hide, jump, ride a bike or scooter, sit, socialise, and role-play".

Ultimately, 21 cubes were constructed:  8 of wood with open interiors to form chairs, chariots, soap boxes and hiding spaces, 8 solid cubes to line up as hurdles (or look at your reflection in the shiny stainless steel) and 5 'smooth and cooling' concrete cubes.  All of the cubes can be used together as seating for an event.

I think it's fascinating that a resident's group that had been unable to come to consensus over 'traditional' designs presented by playground fabricators achieved unity with such a non-conventional plan.  It's a testimony to the power of involving the community with the design process, and of their willingness to be more open to design innovation than we often assume.

The playscape's reception was summed up by a ten-year old resident:  "I think it's magnificent and cool and exciting and it is much more fun than the old park.  We made this one."

Catherine Greig is the founder and director of make:good, and I talked to her about posting her projects back in July yet here it is nearly December, which is just a reminder that if you send me stuff (which is great, keep doing it!) it may take me a month or so to get to your email and another few months for it to work its way onto the blog.  There is a lot of correspondence to keep up with at this point, and also that pesky issue of keeping my real job going.

SO, if you happen to be in London and would rather just chat in person:  I'm traveling over soon, and there will be an informal gathering from noon to two on Friday, December 3rd to talk about new playground ideas.  If you're interested send a quick RSVP (by comment or by direct email, either way) and based on the number of replies a location will be announced shortly.  Hope to see you!

"Shadow Play" by Richter Spielgerate

Germany-based Richter Spielgerate has recently developed "Shadow Play", an interactive playground installation in which children (I think grown-ups would like this, too!)  cast shapes and colors onto the ground plane by rotating panels attached at the top of a pole until their shadows overlap.   

Each pole provides for 360 degree rotation, and the changing arc of the sun would require some really interesting angular adjustments to get the shadows to overlap, which a group could work together to achieve.  What a great learning opportunity!

[found at colourlessdesign]

Treehouse, Drayton Park Primary School, drdh architects, 2005

"The tree was the only natural feature in a hard urban playground, but had been fenced off due to its roots breaking up the tarmac surface and making it dangerous. The preparatory works for the tree house involved breaking up the surface around the tree to allow the roots access to water. This new ground was covered by the open deck of the interior floor of the house which surrounds the trunk. A spiral stair, with a rope handrail climbs up into the branches of the tree, allowing the children the opportunity to look across the playground from within the leaves. At the top of the stairs, provision for a future slide to be fitted was allowed, through a removable panel, once funding allowed."

A lovely solution for a lonely tree, constructed by the BA (Hons) Architecture students of Studio 1 in 2005 at London Metropolitan University  under the leadership of Daniel Rosbottom and David Howarth, principals of drdh architects.  The project was a finalist in the Architects' Journal Small Projects Award 2005.

Full disclosure:  Daniel and David are my architects, my church's architects, and have lately been here in Oklahoma to eat hot dogs, see the buffalo and try to comprehend an OU football game.   But mostly to bring our little congregation an amazing, innovative design for a new building that nestles into our 100 acres of prairie like it knew beforehand the tallgrass and the wind.  There will, of course, be a playground.  I'll keep you posted.

Woodthorpe Grange Playground, Keita Takahashi, Nottingham, UK (proposed)

Were Archigram around today, they might be video game designers, whose speculation in virtual reality can lead to equally interesting real-world structures.  So kudos to Nottingham for giving a playground commission to Keita Takahashi, creator of Katamari Damacy and Noby Noby Boy.  (disclaimer: I'm not myself a gamer but am told on good authority that these are AMAZING.)

He's just released (still speculative) sketches and preliminary designs on his blog, with the goal of creating  "something that anyone can play with, kids, adults, dogs. But the way 3 years old kids would play is very different from 5 years old. Besides that, who to play with is also a big element that changes the way they play. For example, they would play more safely with parents, while they would play more adventurously with other kids."

 

 

I've included mostly Keita's sketches here because they're so appealing, but it is interesting to watch their transformation into more concrete design images on his blog...he frankly acknowledges that many of his initial ideas "may be too dangerous"!

While the focus on this blog is often on the landscape of playgrounds, it's still nice to see fresh thinking about its components. [Thanks, Bryant!]

Milton Keynes Adventure Playground, Archigram, Calvert End, UK, 1972

The Archigram archives are now fully online at the University of Westminster.  Given the irreverent speculation their practice liked to engage in it's appropriate, I think, that their only public built structure was a playground:  an adventure space for unconstrained construction in the presumptive 'new town' utopia (1967) of Milton Keynes,  frequented by architecture-types and their children in spite of its leaky roof.

 

It has long since been demolished, but Iqbal Alaam at flickr has a couple of vintage photos of the 'boat' (the smokestacks were actually ventilation for the toilets), showing spaces for play on both the ground level and the roof terrace.  

Though this was their only official playspace, other aspects of Archigram's inherent playfulness (cheekiness might be a better description) were congruent with 1970s playground design, and their 'Universal Structure' [source] has obvious overlaps with the previously blogged original Golden Gate Playground in San Francisco.

[Thanks to Susan Solomon (author of American Playgrounds: Revitalizing Community Space) for the photos of vintage Golden Gate Park...I've never discovered what happened to this equipment.  If you know, get in touch!]