The brief was to create a playground for two young boys and their friends, at the end of a medium sized garden in Hampstead. The boys demanded that any structures should be crenelated!
Inspired by the pigeon houses of southern France, we developed two towers designed to be grand but miniature in scale. The playground was an exercise in traditional craftsmanship, timber framing, boat building and joinery. We developed the concept of a sandpit hidden under trap doors that could be moved around the play area with ropes, pulleys, shoots, buggies and a miniature working crane!
The planting of thick shaped hedges were carefully considered to form walls and secret entrances, hiding doorways, stairs and a slide.
We developed interchangeable window flats, so that the children could transform the spaces into space rockets, pirate ships and castles. There was also a hidden control panel that flipped down from the wall.
The project was an exercise in detail, from hand made timber latches, dovetail hinges and carved finials to hand made pulley blocks.
The project helped form our philosophy for playgrounds, making playgrounds enjoyable for adults, making interactive traditional games, exposing the working and engineering, as well as introducing formal architecture to play design.
