The idea of a community or public playground is about creating an accessible recreational space for all. However, in many cases, initiating a playground project might fail due to insufficient funds or regulations/restrictions. The first challenge is largely to set the project in motion and, most importantly, get the community’s positive reception and, if possible, its involvement, thus ensuring the project's success and sustainability.
While playground development safety standards must be respected, the design needn’t be too elaborate, as the space will eventually take whatever shape the children imagine and make it. Still, when evaluating many recent playground projects, they often involve substantial landscaping efforts/costs and implementation of sports flooring and state-of-the-art equipment. The latter and other usual practices are not always attainable in some marginalized communities that would most benefit from having available and safe recreational spaces for their youth.
Through the following listed projects, we delve into some architect's processes to build truly sustainable and democratic playgrounds in various regions of the world.
Magdy El Khouly Street Rehab / Ahmed Hossam Saafan
Based on a series of community meetings, the project’s architect understood the community’s priority, which was to create a safe zone for the kids of one of the city’s most underserved neighborhoods. The playground's creation also entailed working on the surrounding building facades, while the adopted means of construction utilized local materials and labor to promote economic growth.
The limited project budget was distributed based on whatever would render the broadest effect. This included working on the building elevations, adding some street benches and pavers, modifying the landscape, and adding lighting near the detachable multipurpose use kid’s area. The rest was achieved through paint. Murals and “subtle additions abstracted from traditional upper Egypt houses” line the windows, making this street “ a living, vibrant thing.”
Fun-ction Junction / MEDS (Meeting of Design Students)
For MEDS’s latest project of 2023 in Gyumri ° Armenia, the tutors (Hadir and Marisa) transformed a playground garden into a vibrant community hub alongside a wonderful international team of 14 people and the beloved neighborhood. The project's core was all about designing for and bringing joy to the people through Refurbishment, Imagination, and Participation. The aim was to bring life to an existing garden and elements by creating a unique playground and a beautiful, comfortable community space.
The team’s approach was simple yet impactful - refurbishing and reusing existing elements while drawing inspiration from aspirations of diverse childhood memories and the neighbors’ desires. Along with the participants, MEDS participants designed every aspect with the locals in mind, ensuring they played a pivotal role in the entire process. Participatory Design at its finest.
Udaan Park / Studio Saar
As Studio Saar approached the newly transformed Udaan Park, they tried to reconfigure the haphazard layout of the original park by creating a “coherent journey from the street down to the lake while using the site’s natural topography and bedrock formations.”
Once again, the trick to ensuring an achievable and community-engaging result was using local materials and native plants. All the playgrounds were made with locally recycled and reused elements, some of which were available on-site, such as reclaimed tires used as planters and recycled saree fabrics made into swing ropes. Steel reinforcement bars were even repurposed for nonstructural parts of the fencing.
Bamboo Playground / Blue Temple
With a seed grant from the Design Trust in Hong Kong, Blue Temple architects injected a safe playground into an unconsidered and informal public space in the city. The resulting structure actually lay through “an above-ground water pipeline that over time became a pedestrian highway.”
Local Bamboo was naturally the material of choice. Together with Kyaw Zin Latt, a Myanmar bamboo technician, an intricate structure was developed, paying attention to the species of bamboo used and the joint details, ensuring a practical and buildable monument. The result is a beautifully dynamic project that offers the children a sense of place.
