Children's Play Park

2014. Site Location: Wellington, NZ

Client:  VUW

Type: Outdoor Educational Garden Project, Building local environments with outdoor educational and recreational opportunities for children

The children’s garden concept was focused on developing a child orientated social environment within the confines of Wellington’s Botanic Gardens that could enhance the the spatial experience through raw elements of landscape planting and nature. 

The garden incorporated these spatial experiences throughout the site solely using vegetation planted in certain techniques and structures in order to achieve manageable environments for children and to create meaningful spaces not just for play but also for outdoor learning and recreation.

This concept for the Play Park involved a sequence of contrasting spatial experiences in the form of platforms, terraces or ‘islands’, which are carved using the existing topography of the site. These islands were used to build environments which children could perceive as adventurous and mysterious.

The impression that is to be formed is one of certain contrasting spatial qualities in the form of ‘Investigative playfulness’, or the cautious and the energetic characteristics associated with children. Planting was used for structural, complementary and anchoring purposes to build a coherent activity environment for children’s play. The planting was structured according to a theme of islands leading into specific spaces and clusters of dense and shallow vegetation allowing exploration.