Almost every park needs a playground area and children’s playgrounds are one of the toughest typologies to design. The equipment available is either ugly or beyond budget, especially in the public realm. Then the programme is repetitive — poles, slides, swings, climbing walls, sandpits. For the designer to cover the developmental needs of all ages and keep the play exciting at the same time, is challenging. Then, the safety measurements are strict to a point it can fully dictate the implementation, then there are vandalism-proof requirements, exposure to weather conditions, then there are the parents, dogs, poisonous and allergenic plants, fences and maintenance; and all these things add up to a point where one would say: “just grab a stick and poke something with it”. 

Yet playgrounds can be rewarding. They can bring a community together, playgrounds are lively and a creative act. It seems this is the typology in which landscape architects excel. The profession holds numerous brilliant examples of ingenious and bespoke designs. We sometimes need to fight ourselves not to overdesign it.

The concept of junk or construction playground was invented by landscape architect C. Th. Sørensen and he tested it with Dan Fink in Copenhagen during the Second World War. The idea was to promote children’s activity while mitigating the distress of war by engaging children in self-directed play. The junk playground used scrap materials that kids were encouraged to assemble and tear down as they pleased, promoting a communal, do-it-together play. In following decades, Denmark had over a dozen skrammellegepladsen, and they spread around the world by advocacy for postwar reconstruction by play, promoted by English landscape architect Lady Allen of Hurtwood. She is most famous for her quote “Better a broken bone than a broken spirit” which summarizes in essence what the junk playgrounds were about: freedom and autonomy. Kids play was supervised yet unobstructed and parents weren’t allowed to enter. Kids could burn fire, make castles, demolish them and teach one another.

While the societal conditions were then hugely different, we still have a chance to let children co-create adventurous, dynamic, and spontaneous playscapes. In this chapter, we focus on playgrounds where kids have an opportunity to manipulate their environment and promote their agency. Unfinished things are inviting for participation and even if construction is impermanent, the personal experience is lasting.

 

Champ de la Confluence in Lyon designed by BASE Landscape Architecture is not particularly a playground yet it offers everything children need without ordering how to play. There is a central structure that works as a stage and a communal point. Besides, there are meadows, and heaps of soil for gardening, it’s beautifully shabby. The space works as a strategic catalyst for further development and in the vicinity, a new official playground already emerged. 

BASE are in general fantastic playscapes creators. We’ve picked the next playground The Rampart Wave because it offers danger and decision-making. By climbing the curved wooden wall poked by handholds, kids can reach the towers while helping each other by grabbing hands and pulling up. The labyrinthian paths behind the wall can be exited by the slides that bring one down to the start. The play structure is exuberant and challengingly risky. Check out the BASE Belleville Playground and Design of the Seafront – Calais.

Our next stop is the Recycled Playground by 2012architecten in Rotterdam. The recycled windmill turbine offers a distinctive playground with the re-appropriation of its parts for a water tank, sandbox frame, and climbing structures of unusual and irregular shape. While not entirely accommodating a personal agency in de- and reconstruction, the play equipment is open to a point where kids can stage their own agendas. 

Krämeracker Primary School Grounds designed by Ganz Landschaftsarchitekten is an example of a crude space that at first sight offers very little in terms of materiality, just some wooden poles and heaps of rubble. Yet heaps of rubble can be many things. Wooden blocks can be rearranged and poles restacked. What will be interesting to see is what develops here in time — how this playground will be appropriated, where the plants will grow and where they are trampled with use. What is especially welcome is the playground is open and accessible to wider community.

Pico Playground in Lugano designed by De Molfetta Strode uses elements of the surrounding landscapes and reframes them as elements of play, creating distinct topographies. The renovation intentionally prioritises open-ended play by using undetermined objects that can serve the users in various ways. The informal setting is inviting for one to discover and appropriate elements for spontaneous engagement.

The Block designed by desert INK in Dubai, is for a difference, openly intended to impress and give a catchy identity for incoming development. The designers used the opportunity of unwanted concrete blocks that remained on site from the canal’s development and by stacking them and reusing them in creative ways gave them a new vibe. Simple arrangements make the blocks a labyrinth, a slide, a boulder, a shelter and a fence.

Charlotte Ammundsens Plads designed by 1:1 Landskab is a gritty playground for youth with designed edges around the sunken basketball court. The cristaline structures without perscribed use are available for sitting, climbing and skating. This non-excludable design is interesting and by installing the play equipment for younger kids presumes mixed use across generations.

Another cool project by 1:1 Landskab is Guldbergs Plads in Copenhagen. One simple element — the pole, makes the design open to a point where various groups can use it for climbing, slack-line, one could hang a hammock or create a tent from the structures. Robustness is guaranteed while keeping the flexibility of use.

Common-Unity in Mexico City, designed by Rozana Montiel | Estudio de Arquitectura is a roofed community platform. This simple structure allows everyone to appropriate it and use it with the other members of the community. It creates a dialogue of uses and connects them in one sway. Play equipment on the edges is integrated into the roof structure and a central blackboard adds the educational note.

Participatory School Yard Design at Herbert Hoover Secondary School designed by gruppe F | Freiraum für alle GmbH in Berlin is dedicated to theatre play. That makes the site open to interpretation and adjustments to create a scenery. Hand-made wooden furniture, screens and props accompany the School Yard where scrap material can be revived by throwing a show.

Another project by gruppe F | Freiraum für alle GmbH, the Wuhlepark, is intervening in this undermaintained site as minimally as possible. By allowing the nature of things to run its course, the park maintains spectacular unattained patches where discovery can take place. The ruin-like feel of the site allows for intervention without too much stress of surveillance.

the REAL estate by AL/Arch in Bat Yam is a playground covered in fabric-formed concrete “blanket” which with its perforations adds to the strange effect of this unusual intervention. By calling it “real estate” and by inverting public/private domains the designers underpinned the asset of public space. They worked with already established conditions by not shying away from illicit behaviour but by creating a space that challenges them.

The 12 Season Park by Taktyk in Paris, has unfortunately ceased to exist. But for three years of its time, the teams of children appropriating the site and the theatrical Collectif Chapelle Charbon created an ongoing public programme. Kids as designers were learning by doing on how to activate underused space and by action, adding (at least personal) value to it. Participatory design through play is a key feature and the abandoned plot is a dream.

We conclude the selection with the Experimental Playground in London by Kinnear Landscape Architects who say that this project was codesigned by pupils and that is open enough to allow for imaginative and more inclusive play. It strikes the strings from the teachings of Lady Allen by using out-of-the-ordinary play elements. Since one of the first scrap playgrounds that gained prominence was in the UK, it is even more so interesting to see the school’s neighbouring playground is an Adventure Playground, which works with the same principles as original junk playgrounds.

We would be thrilled to hear your thoughts and suggestions for the “junk playgrounds” we’ve missed. Perhaps because they cannot be found under the playground typology. Perhaps the main problem is as Sørensen observed himself, that junk playgrounds lack the expected aesthetic appeal and can operate today in a more private fashion and only when the community is tightly knitted.

Published on October 30, 2024