Phooey Architects - Children's Activity Centre (Melbourne) |
Monday, 11 February 2008 |
We’ve told you before about some of the creative uses for abandoned shipping containers –
and we wouldn’t keep bringing it up if we didn’t think that design
recycling is still essential. Also, we have never before found a
project where the principles underlying sustainability have been so
successfully achieved. Phooey Architects
completed work on Skinners Playground, a backyard for children living
in public housing in South Melbourne, Australia – and a low cost,
environmentally sound, and socially responsible solution.
Setting design aside for a second, we need to acknowledge that the
architects created a place to find a community support network; a place
for children to learn and grow; a place that provides a place to
escape; and a place where families know children are safe. The result
is similar to the Danish concept of allowing children within a
community to build their own play space. Although the children in South
Melbourne did not actually build this playground, they will take an
active role in how the activity centre will develop and grow.
Beginning with the desire to produce zero waste from conception to
completion, Phooey architects staggered, sliced and arranged four
unpainted shipping containers on the site of the playground. Any
additional material including windows, decking, carpet tiles and
joinery had to be durable, recycled, reclaimed, reused, plantation or
salvaged from demolition. Even parts that were cut off or unassembled
from the containers were used to make a staircase with a
balustrade, overhangs providing external shading, and various
decorative features.
Through the successfull stacking of the shipping containers, a variety
of indoor and outdoor, intimate and public spaces are created. Areas
are provided for study, art, dance, play and general hang out. Every
interior space has visual and physical connections to its surroundings
by opening up onto sandpits, play spaces and even a pond and reed bed
that receives much of the roof’s runoff rainwater. The containers are fully sealed and insulated allowing continued
use through Melbourne’s temperate winter months. And in the summer,
cool ocean breezes help prevent overactive children from
overheating. By Andrew J Wiener
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architecture 
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