Elemental’s 2012 project for the Cerro San Cristobal area children’s park is by all practical and design considerations an excellent park. It cleverly uses a tough inclined site as an asset, and it controls shade and light for what can be a blisteringly hot area. It sets the park in a meaningful relationship to its context, stretching along the busy street it fronts when most public spaces would turn away from the traffic. But what struck me most keenly about Parque de la Infancia was how it stitched play into every part of its design. Alejandro Arevena and Elemental took to heart children’s unique ability to make meaning in places through play, and they embedded design elements that reinforced that ability. I believe this is what elevates the project from just being a quality public park to a place of real meaning and fun for kids, and what has driven it to become such a destination for families in the city.
- Cheap and Sturdy
This rule is easy, just keep construction simple and solid. The whole park is built with a weight and a groundedness to it. Even the treehouses feel tectonic and safe when I sat in there with at least two kid’s worth of weight. The stone used frequently throughout will age well, and I am excited to see how this park wears in over years of use and abuse.
- Under-Design for Imagination
This and the following point were what I saw as the magic of Parque de la Infancia. I was struck by how bare some of the spaces were, and how simple some of the activities were around the park. The slide space is one activity scaled up a hill. The treehouses are very small rooms next to each other. Not one space in this park is complex in its play; not one space has a frivilous theme like a castle or sailboat.
These bare and simple activities are actively getting out of the way of play. By being simple latticed 2×4 sheds on simple floating walkways, the treehouses let looking at and talking to other children become a game. The slide park sets up a totally free framework of play be being entirely free of theme. These spaces get out of the way of kids, and let them elaborate their meaning using their collective imagination.
Simple sheds next to each other can become a whole world of play for a group of children.
- Parallel Play
The slide park is an excellent novel idea. The simple slide, when multiplied up and across a hillside, becomes something like a gameboard, which allows for parallel and competitive play all over it. I can imagine a group of kids timing their slide descents together, racing up and down the top in a relay, or coming up with unique games to play together in this space. The multiplicity of access and simultaneous experience make looking over at your friends in parallel play the most common theme across the major activities of the park. This places kids, and the connections they make with others, at the heart of the space.
The slide park is like physical Chutes & Ladders.
- Meaningful Randomness
The parallel play described above is built on having similar experiences across all of the children playing together. All of the treehouses look identical, and slides on the same level are the same length. However, this parallelism is accented by meaningful randomness worked into the designs. This is the architecture itself engaging in play, and in turn allowing for more fun and discovery. The treehouses jut out to different lengths of walkways over the hillside, making varying lines of site and grouping between them. Every other module in the orange wall park has panels pulled out to see the next one down. It’s little variations like these that reinforce parallel play, and let the park design get out of the way and let kids really play.
Removing just a few panels every other module creates a game of looking.
