An Urban Playground

In collaboration with Tisserin Engineers, we proposed a series of playful interventions which formed a walking trail within the Becontree Estate. Our proposal consisted of three key uses: an urban playground for all ages, community infrastructure and facilities for food growing and food education. The walking trail intersected the Becontree estate in a north south axis to deliver multigenerational outcomes for the Becontree residents at various ‘stations’ or ‘points of interest’. These stations would act as green spaces for multifunctional community infrastructure, drawing on ‘the virtue of the vertical’ to act as community beacons or pillars.

The proposed locations for the interventions were curated to be within a 50-minute walking radius of each other. No specific route was prescribed for the walking trial – it could be as leisurely or as intense as you want it to be. To empower and engage the local constituents of Becontree, we did not prescribe the exact use of the stations either, but instead aimed to work with the Becontree community to establish their own outcomes and how this community infrastructure might best serve them.