What animal is this?

It’s the idea of creating places to play, implemented with the help of experts in the field – children. Their ideas are inspirations for me to design an object dedicated to the space in which we worked together.

• PHASE 1: Design Process
• PHASE 2: Object
• PHASE 3: Workshops and observations

Design Process

“What Animal Is this?” is about participatory development of playgrounds. Designs are created as a result of playing with technical drawings of buildings. During the workshop, children look at the outlines of the building seen from a bird’s eye view. At first, they treat it as a map that allows them to discover the nooks and crannies of the building, to know the size and character of the space in which they are located. Later, the map is treated as the basis for an architectural mock-up, and using the shapes that are hidden in the outlines of buildings, the children draw, stick and pull out animals, which are turned into playground equipment.

Object

I collect all mock-ups and based on them, create a pet to play with. When it’s ready, I meet the children again, to give the animal personality and character. What happens next is for me the subject of research on the heart of the concept of ‘fun’.

The workshops, including the detailed implementation design, took place at Intermediae Matadero in june.  The animal designed with children has just appeared inside of Intermediae building inside of Matadero Madrid – innovative institution in revitalised slaughterhouse.

Workshops and observations

The snake playground opening took a place during UN-Habitat World Urban Forum and soon after was ready to meet kids co-designers. Together we’ve compared kids ideas and the readymade object. Some of co-creators were saying that the snake has their eyes or colour. Other were convinced the object look exactly as they imagined it (even they designed a blue tailed cat previously). We’ve created rules of using the snake, invented his personality and discussed how to take him for a walk around Madrid in Spring. 

The snake was created as the first playground of Intermediae Program “Models of city where children fits”. It will sneak around Matadero till the end of April. Its appearance and the way of using by people will be observed and conclusions may be used in later creations of spaces for kids around the city.

https://www.intermediae.es/agenda/que-animal-es-este