Playground in Belleville Park by BASE Landscape Architecture

Landscape Architecture: BASE (Build A Super Environment) / Franck Poirier, Bertrand Vignal and Clément Willemin

Contractor : City of Paris, Direction des Parcs, Jardins et Espaces Verts
BASE landscape designer mandatory + TERRASOL engineer + Luc Mas consultant
Construction : EIFFAGE (Béton VRD) PYRRHUS (charpente, serrurerie, jeux)

Location: Paris / 20ième
Cost: 1,1 M€
Area: 1000 m2
Completed: 2008
Text and photos: BASE

The design project follows a consultation process carried out by CODEJ (Comité pour le Développement de l’Espace pour le Jeu / Committee for the development of recreation areas) in 2003. Children and adult workshops (oral, written and graphic expressions) made it possible to fine-tune the wishes of the populations concerned and identify the project’s design objectives.
Our work then consisted in synthesizing and interpreting the public’s expectations to provide a spatial response both truthful and original.

Development of the imaginary
Free-flowing and powerful, the children’s imaginary does not need explicit decors to strive.
We will take our inspiration from a game as spontaneous as interminable, played in groups by children of all ages: the playhouse.
The playhouse can be designed in several versions: tree-dwelling, troglodyte, forest, etc.
There is also an urban, interior and minimal version which works just as well: it is the Sunday afternoon playhouse, built from scratch in the bedroom with a mattress and its support, a chair, broom sticks and stretched bath towels. Successively a boat, a hanging or a medieval castle, it suits all interpretations and abstractions: it is intelligent.
In this perspective, we tried to confuse matters by overlaying various possible evocations: mountain landscape, building site, flying carpet, machicolation, medieval fortifications, pirate ship rails, etc.

Located on a high-pitched slope, the playground area is a climbing course with different inclinations for different levels and different age groups.