Baltic Street Adventure Playground, image: Assemble
You may know Assemble from their winning the Turner Prize. Or from their The Brutalist Playground made out of foam. But did you know they also make adventure playgrounds?
In 2014 the architecture collective created Baltic Street Adventure Playground in East Glasgow, Scotland, as part of the culture program for the Commonwealth Games. Like any good, real adventure playground, it's a lightly supervised apparent chaos zone (but not really) stocked with warm clothing and slightly dangerous tools and things that kids might get hurt with. Like a giant, foam-wrapped culvert that kids get rolled along inside. As someone I'm not related to named Lady Allen from a country with universal health care once said, "better a broken bone than a broken spirit."
And speaking of spirit, Spirit of Play is an ongoing, kid-led research project Assemble is conducting with National Trust, to develop new, challenging, educational, and sustainable ways of engaging kids with the National Trust's forests and natural sites. It looks like it involves many elements of an adventure playground, except the saws.
Baltic Street Adventure Playground on Assmble's site [assemblestudio.co.uk]
Baltic Street Adventure Play website [ balticstreetadventureplay.co.uk]
Spirit of Play on Assemble's site [assemblestudio.co.uk]
