When building any structure, there is a choice that has to be made from the get-go: do you work with the site or do you modify the site to work with your design? When building a house or an office complex, the needs of the end user often dictate a standard design with recognizable parameters and features. But when you are building a playground, these rules may not always apply, and in this case, joyously so.
A building site with weird conical peaks and deep valleys will be seen as a disadvantage 99% of the time. JMD Design of Sydney, Australia wholeheartedly embraced that remaining one percent with spectacular results. From the huge slides, some of which tunnel through the hillside, to the beautiful futuristic swing set, every detail is a revelation.
Be sure to check out all of the pictures so you can get a sense of the scale of this playground, and a sense of what heaven might look like to a little kid (and some pretty big kids, too).
• See more: The Cool Hunter and JMD Design
MORE PLAYGROUNDS ON APARTMENT THERAPY:
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• A Colorful & Inspired Backyard Playground
• Not Your Typical Playgrounds
(Images: JMD Design)
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wow. I was waiting for the picture of a teletubbie to pop out of the ground.
My kids adore this park. It's near their grandparents house so every time they visit Nan & Pop they spend hours here. It is hands down the best playground we've ever been to. Beautiful spot too.
While it does look super fun--don't the metal slides get painfully hot?
I wish they made something like this here. The children's parks here are getting painfully boring due to safety.
I used to slide on a tall metal slide ( not in the US) and it was so much fun. Don't remember it being hot.
Metal slides abound in the U.S. I remember there being one at my daycare and I know the park down the street from where I live now, in a different state, has one, too. They get hot in extreme heat, but so do plastic slides. The metal slides also make for better sliding.
I haven't seen a merry-go-round in ages. :[
We have a merry go round at ours. This post seems to evoke the word 'painfully' quite a bit in the comments. It's beautiful but I suspect the kiddos wear pants on those slides. I remember losing the 1st couple of layers of skin on the bottoms of my thighs on slides like those back in the 70's! ;) I agree with the Teletubbie comment!
Muesli, Australia is far less litigious than the US. This park could exist stateside only as a private concern, with waivers of liability signed by the guardians.
It looks like fun for all, but a couple things stand out as not so great. There's a surprising lack of shade (in a country that is obsessed with skin cancer), and it appears that a lot of AstroTurf has been used along with lawn. Vast swaths of lawn are wasteful and hard to maintain in drought-prone Australia, and astroturf gets pretty unpleasant over time. I wonder how this is maintained-- the mowing of the real grass along with the cleaning of the fake turf.
I wonder, too, how vandals are kept out of the place. Sydney has plenty of troublemakers, like any big city.
I want to go to there.
@basil&bones you too my comment! my 3 year old came over and said 'I want to go there!" I said it was too far away and so he said "well I want to go far away to go to there! can we do that someday?!" I love it. LOVE IT. we have a park here that is in the hot sun and the dark green plastic slides hurt little kids all the time.
I had the same thoughts as Rural and Rueful - where is the shade and why so much fake turf (it looks like fake turf). It does really look like a fun park, but I'd rather have trees!
Woah!
I wish parks like this were made in NYC
I believe the lack of trees and grass has a lot to do with the architects purposely using the terrain and environment present before they built, which I assume wasn't exactly the garden of Eden.
But I absolutely agree on metal/dark green slides, I have no idea why they don't make them in lighter colors, they get ridiculously hot to the touch.
We hear the laughter from this park at our house. One of my favorite aspects not shown, is a large field with small hills (mountains to children), with a tree planted at the top of each one. It is very whimsical.
There are shaded areas, especially the sand area where the youngest children tend to play. In Australia we "slip, slop, slap" sunscreen every time we're outside (for better or for worse). Parents don't leave the house without sunscreen, hats, and water.
This park caters to a wide range of ages and abilities and it is still in development. My kids love it.
Hey, practically scorching the back of your legs off is an Australian rite of passage! ;) I was devastated when they replaced the tall metal slide in the local park with a crappy plastic one.
Everything is coated in rubber, now. It's oversanitised and just not fun. I might have to pay a visit to Olympic Park...
The reason we don't get cool stuff like this in the sates is because all those people that sue others for their own idiocy would sue when they (or their kids) do something stupid like fall off the edge of the spider's web because they got to close.
A slide like this is way safer than the ones that are just freestanding. If you fall off this one, well, you're on the hill not dropping several feet to the ground. I like the climbing handholds on the hill better than a ladder too, much more challenging and better exercise. Also good for when you chicken out and just want to get down without sliding. A lot of playgrounds in my area use wood chips as a surface material. It gets pretty disgusting what with all the things dropped in it. At least the fake grass can be hosed down once in a while and you can probably see what's lurking in it.
Those metal slides look distinctive of German based company, Wiegand. Their work is beautiful and has been featured in modern art museums. Check it out: http://www.wiegandslide.com/119.html?&L=1
Their slides can be found all over the world. I believe they just built a mountain coaster in New England and have more on the way stateside.
Now that is a park.