Louis Häfliger Park, Kuhn Truninger Landscape Architecture, Zurich, Switzerland, 2003

Impressive earthworks blended with intentionally old school playground equipment, by Kuhn Truninger of Zurich.
[found at a nice new landscape/architecture blog: sotto la vernice]

I like this playground, but I wish each of the earth mounds had a tree by it.  Think of climbing up the mound, then into the tree, then jumping from the tree back down to the mound...

Historic Earthworks for the Playground

So I mentioned in the previous post about the Haye Playground by Mortar and Pestle that its snail-like forms have historic antecedents, which I did a series of posts about some time ago at my garden history blog (here, and here).   Like all turf installations, they require maintenance but are relatively easy to construct for the playground, and a nice way to add historical context.    

The spiraling snail mount was a favorite of the Elizabethans,  included in an entertainment staged for Elizabeth I at Elvetham in 1591 in which the snail mount 'resembleth a monster', and was fired upon with cannon (see it there in the lower right corner)

Sir Francis Bacon's garden (c. 1620) had 'in the very middle, a fair mount, with three ascents, and alleys, enough for four to walk abreast; which I would have to be perfect circles...and the whole mount to be thirty foot high'.   The snail mount was was a logical response to the desire to view a flat garden from a high overlook, and its wide, spiraling paths a practical way for heavily skirted ladies to ascend on a gentle incline.

The best surviving example is at Lyveden New Bield in Northamptonshire, where twin snail mounts arise from a moated landscape surrounding Thomas Tresham's haunting, never-finished Trinitarian retreat.  (Highly, highly recommended for a visit.)

The horticulture students at Cornell University made a smaller construct...I particularly love the idea of a group of people 'walking in' the spiral to the top.

 

An even earlier model is the medieval turf seat (there's a good historical overview at the Met garden blog), which was sometimes just a shaped area of turf, with or without a seat back, but could also be framed into the seat shape by wattles or boards or masonry.  

There's been a resurgence of interest in these 'green sofas' in the last few years....instructions for making a 'sprout couch' can be found at ReadyMade magazine, and there is a commercial kit for making a turf 'chair'.  But I prefer simpler, less literal constructs, like this one from the Goresbrook park in Dangenham:

Or these by environmental artist Angela Ciotti from a 1983 installation in Pennsylvania:

And my favorite is the idyllic example painted by Ilya Repin in the waning, dappled days of the Russian elite.

Also note some earthworks previously featured on the blog:  Maya Lin's wavefield, and  the playhills of Dani Karavan and Parklife London. 

Much more could be done with turf on playgrounds, so take this as inspiration!

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!

Spa Fields Hills, Parklife London, 2007

Reminiscent of Dani Karavan's work, the play hills at the Spa Fields playscape by Parklife London.

Bike Hills at the Garden of Remembrance, Dani Karavan, 1999

I don't think that the undulating hills at artist Dani Karavan's Garden of Remembrance in Duisberg were intended as a playscape, but the artist wouldn't mind:

"Generally, my work is created for people to use. My art cannot exist without people. My work is not there to be looked at but to be experienced.”

photos and text from the book 'In Gardens', published by Birkhäuser Basel, 2005.