GROUND: a stage and an urban teen jungle

How about building a Chinese graffiti wall with teen activities through the park? Or an urban jungle with lots of climbing and lush resting zones? 
At the Forest & Landscape department of the University of Copenhagen lecturer Bettina Lamm challenged students to design a GROUND on Langeland’s Square in Copenhagen. The KOMPAN GROUND principles and the KOMPAN Play Institute survey of young people’s wishes for their places formed the research basis of the class. At the presentation of final projects an abundance of creative and not least youth friendly suggestions came up. Many of them focused on how to make teenage girls more physically active outdoors. We have picked two suggestions to demonstrate the span in solutions of the task of making Langeland’s Square a GROUND for the 10-15yearolds:

My stage. My domain.

My Stage. My Domain.
By Jianzhou Zeng, exchange student from Guangzou, China.

Jianzhou Zeng sets up three main principles for creating a domain, a stage for kids:

1. a site providing different activities, offering kids possibilities “to play, to talk and to create”.
2. a site for children in different ages and genders, provided by a wall, that divides the square horizontally and vertically, offering different zones for activities that may be conflicting and furthering that “the boys can play noisy games under the WALL while the girls can talk or read on the WALL.
3. A site for creativity: kids should get the chance of painting graffiti on the wall. In fact, Jianzhou states: “The design is not finished until the WALL is covered by the colourful vivid graffiti made by the kids.”

Jianzhou suggests that an elevated wall be build across the square to offer room for activities above and below. In this way the running tracks also suggested are provided with the possibility of running up- and downhill in the middle of the city. The wall and the running paths divide the 2300 m2 square into four sections:
An area for sports, a rock climbing area, an area for kids 6-12 years as well as an area for kids 0-6 years. On top of the wall there is a fifth area which is designated for resting: a quiet area.

The Colourful urban teen jungle

Urban teen jungle
By Ellen Oll, student at Forest & Landscape, Copenhagen.

Ellen Oll sets out to create ”a free meeting place for children and young people aged 10-15”. The place should encourage social as well as physical activity but should also provide relaxation and quiet games and activities at all times of year. The atmosphere should be youthful, happy, cheerful like Jungle/Tarzan; Christiania/ hippie, Carnival/party and comics. This implies a choice of shapes that is varied, energetic and contrasting to the classicistic signals of the surrounding buildings. The elements should be represented in water, colours, scents and a contrasting use of both nature and synthetic materials.

The GROUND is divided in 6 layers:

1. the strongly coloured ground surface of rubber,
2. the flower and fruit beds,
3. the water,
4. the benches and pergolas,
5. the play elements: a skater ramp, a ball play pit, a trampoline, a sculture, a flying fox, swings and
6. a multifunctional activity space for play, training and gathering.