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Architects: Hsc Designs
- Area: 5000 ft²
- Year: 2024
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Photographs:Ravi Mistry Photography
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Lead Architects: Hiloni Sutaria
Materials used: Concrete, Ms. Pipes - A built space imagined as a child’s dream, this play space made from mostly recycled materials is our attempt to completely reimagine kid's play space. The 5 sandpits of the space are imagined as five zones that tie in the philosophy of the teachings of the school, Montessori learning. This type of learning teaches children independence, life skills and adventure and risk-taking abilities through everyday life challenges and tools that are found around them.
Looking at this, we have designed a space that includes a water zone, sand zone, climbing, swinging, and sliding spaces as a reimagined play gym, and all of these culminate into a tunnel space that is very uniquely designed from waste concrete pipes and mosaic which give it a colorful appeal to children. The jungle gym has curves that are designed by studying the anthropometry of children and giving curves where the children can explore different climbing surfaces very safely. The curves are made with very thin MS sections, which make it very easy for little children to hold them as compared to thick sections usually found in commercial jungle gyms. The colorful play spaces are designed in collaboration with the kids from the school, who have painted the trees and reused wooden tree logs from old trees, which gives them a sense of ownership and accomplishment, and they always have memories tied to the space.
The space is divided into 5 portions, all connected by the beautiful shading of the trees and the lovely sound of birds nesting in the trees. One of the spaces is this sinuous flow of Thin MS sections, which make it easy for kids to hold, hang on, and climb on the structure but are very differently designed to inspire the kid's imagination and designed according to their anthropometric proportions. The other space is a sandpit, which has green cones that serve as water elements for the water and sand play but also audio simulation by being echo chambers for the kids to talk in.
One of the spaces becomes an outdoor classroom for the kids, where they sit under the shade of the trees on wooden stubs reused from their old trees and painted in collaboration with the kids from the school. Lastly, this all culminates into the central space, which is the most colorful space made from recycled concrete pipes and mosaic to make it into this one-of-a-kind reimagined tunnels and sliding space which inspires the kids to explore the cozy spaces as well as ignite their risk-taking ability. The permanent mist showers spraying onto the play space give the kids relief from the Ahmedabad summer heat as well as being a fun element for kids to run around in. The windchimes become an auditory simulation for kids to associate with a fun time.
This school is one of the oldest and most popular school in the city and hence the idea to inculcate the aspect of sustainability and reuse of material to create something that the children have never imagined before. The most important study done in the space was to make the space as safe as possible for the children along with not making it boring for the kids to play on it.
