Julie Sutton director of In2Play, is standing at the grand metal entrance of the new Ore Valley adventure playground. In2Play, a group of playground operators, will be managing the playground once it officially opens. As its director, Sutton was here when the first children from the nearby neighbourhoods of Broom Grove and Farley Bank came in to have a look around. She says that the response of one young boy as he first entered the adventure playground was: ‘did you get those doors from a prison? I went to visit a mate in prison and they had those doors.’ Situated at the base of the Ore Valley in Hastings, the playground sits at the boundary between two deprived neighbourhoods. More supervised social condenser than open playground, it is a place in which children can learn to access risk for themselves.
To tackle this rather particular brief, Hastings Council invited six architectural practices to an intensive one-day competitive consultation in September 2009. London-based East was among them, and was soon awarded the project. It is not an entirely surprising result. Over the past 15 years, the practice has developed a reputation for enjoying the types of projects that most architects wouldn’t touch with a barge pole. Its projects often involve numerous clients and extended consultations, and are sometimes accompanied by comparatively small budgets. For example, in Hatcham Garden in Lewisham, the practice spent six months in consultation with parents just to get a sand pit. East thrives on listening to the users. As directors Judith Lösing and Julian Lewis describe, ‘we are not afraid to ask the user: “what do you want the design to do?”’
This was precisely the strategy that won East the Ore Valley adventure playground. At the consultation, East met with the eventual users of the project: children aged eight to 13. Through the course of the day, one little girl insisted on continuously meowing at them. While most architects may have been distracted or given up, East persevered and concluded; the most important thing in this project is that children are given a robust infrastructure, which will allow them to exert their energy in whichever way they see fit; meowing or otherwise.
One year later, the Ore Valley adventure playground is about to open its doors, ready to be used and abused. Imagine a remote adventure lodge tucked away in a secret forest, and you might begin to get a sense of the grounds. It is a place where children are encouraged to play, build, and create their own fantastical worlds.
The focal point of the project is the converted coach house. The shell of the building was refurbished and heavily insulated timber rooms were placed within. Co-director Lewis likens the interior space to a village, where the timber rooms are tucked towards the corners of the building shell, creating an open space in the centre. One gets the impression that this central spot will be used as a continuation of the surrounding forest, it is a place to play football, build shelters and generally run wild.
In designing the forest, many of the built elements were left deliberately ambiguous: a series of ‘implied spaces’ rather than strictly defined enclosed spaces. There are play elements dotted throughout the forest; a zipwire, two slides, a grass turf, a sweeping timber ramp, and in one far corner of the site nine large timber poles protrude out of the ground. The idea being exclusively to give the children something to work with, build upon, or eventually even destroy, if they see fit.
In keeping with this, both indoors and out, the materials chosen are equally raw and durable. The timber rooms have been largely left untreated with only small segments painted in chalkboard paint, presumably to let children ‘tag’ their new playground. Incidentally, while the entrance doors are not from a prison, one can easily forgive the misunderstanding. There is no doubt that this is a robust place that encourages energetic play.
It is not all tough, however. The project has its soft moments, but these are already proving troublesome. The playground has not even officially opened and a rock has already been pelted through the only glass door. Project operators In2Play argued that the architects should have never designed a glass door in the first place. However, East maintains that vandalism is an inevitable teething problem in such projects, and it would be counterproductive to allow a fear of vandalism to create designs that are closed in on themselves. One can’t help but notice that in a project defined by a rigorous adherence to the raw and the robust, the glass door is something of an anomaly.
Even so, this has not spoilt the general feel of wild adventure. It is easy to imagine children huddled in groups devising new ways to make the space their own. The true test will be when the playground is up and running permanently, the official opening was on 17 October. So far, though, it promises to be a success. With children already arriving to test it, the playground looks set to become the new attraction at Hastings.
