The Playscape Garden | London, UK | Unit 21 | 2021

Awarded First Class Honours

The Playscape Garden is a versatile community centre where architectural elements can be altered by the community within the building or from afar. The community’s presence is felt in the garden, whether through digital or physical means. With the mouse-tracking and manipulation techniques developed in the previous project, one of the ‘tending’ actions–sifting–is translated into a canopy that retains a dematerialised animated quality but still directly affects the light, comfort, and use of spaces in the building below.

The Playscape Garden is conceived of as an urban landscape with undulating interacting planes, mountainous structures, excavations, punctures and a ‘sifting roof’, where visitors can explore like children and discover the unlimited possibilities of the body and physical perceptions. The enclosed programme and mixture of spaces for adults and children to learn, play and interact forms a fun and engaging environment for the community.

The Uncertain Gardener

Through developing a mouse-tracking and manipulation system, The Uncertain Gardener explores the translation of numerical activities into geometric form-growing instructions.

The Gardening Taxonomy

A gardening taxonomy is developed in terms of spatial elements and moments. Experimentations are conducted on how architecture can become equivalent to ‘tending’ activities.

The Sifting Roof

A ‘tending’ action is developed as a two-layer canopy, aiming to create shifting light and a moiré effect that alters the natural illumination and comfort within the building.