Public playgrounds are very rarely designed by the users. FREE PLAY offers a safe framework for children to have their adventure-play ideas realised. It aims to act as a designed 3D framework for the children’s proposals – a framework on which the children can hang their ideas; a sculptural signpost celebrating the children’s games activities and imagination.
FIXED PLAY – The proposal takes the form of soft landscape gestures, hills, on which our sculptural forms sit, emphasising the circular nature of the site and highlighting the notion of the circle as a place for inclusion, community and diversity. We call this fixed play – proposed by our collective as free-standing sculptural works.
FREE PLAY – These large gestures will be sub-divided into smaller circular areas of intensity and programs which resemble petri dishes. The idea is for these to be developed through a series of workshops with local children, where they will sketch and paint ideas on a large canvas which we will in turn translate, resolve, materialise and add to the park as elements of surprise – elements of free play.
Birdseye view shows the design proposal within the existing circular geometry of Pirelli Park.
Type: LANDSCAPE
Location: Eastleigh, UK
Size: 1200m2
For: EASTLEIGH BOROUGH COUNCIL
Status: Shortlisted scheme,to design a new approach to public playgrounds for Eastleigh
Collaborators: WIGNALL & MOORE
With thanks to: MILLIMETRE