Negar Anvari

byggeleg

Environmental Design

2024

While it's essential for adults to prioritize children's safety, it's equally important to strike a balance with the need for children to explore the real world to some extent. Criticisms of repetitive, overly protected conventional playgrounds, commonly found in many public schools, emerged during World War Two in Denmark. Danish landscape architect Carl Theodor Sørensen observed that children often preferred playing in bomb sites over traditional playgrounds. This philosophy, later brought to England by landscape architect Marjory Allen, advocates for children to design and build their own play spaces, fostering self-confidence, imagination, and creativity.Drawing on this philosophy, my project focuses on designing a flexible play system suitable for any public school in Toronto. Researching 15 schools in the area helped me understand the differences between urban and suburban school environments. Suburban schools with smaller population of students, typically feature larger outdoor areas, and playgrounds in these types of schools with less defined boundaries are as a part of green space. Urban schools on the other hand, with larger population of students, mostly have more limited outdoor environment, and playgrounds are usually integrate into other parts of the school context such as pathways and school building .In the design phase, I iterated to develop three cubes with distinct functions: a yellow cube for material storage, a blue cube serving as a workshop with tools, and a red cube providing washing facilities. The sizes of the cubes are so that they would fit within a shipping container for easy mobility. Besides the provided tools and materials, I propose integrating household waste objects into playgrounds as a means of connecting them more closely to their respective neighbourhoods. This initiative aims to foster a sense of community ownership and responsibility towards waste management while also encouraging creative reuse and environmental awareness.While the main play happens in between the cubes, to make the cubes more engaged in the play process, I incorporated slits within the exterior walls, designed to accommodate existing materials such as 2x6 lumber and aluminum pipes. This design encourages climbing, hanging, and exploration. Additionally, recycled sheathing covers the exterior walls, providing a surface for children to nail or paint on, with easy replacement when necessary.