UNCERTAINTY
The Playscape Garden
The UCL Bartlett School of Architecture BSc (2021)
Kingsland Road, Haggerston, London, England
THE PLAYSCAPE GARDEN is an innovative community centre that reimagines the concept of a traditional landscape. With its excavations, punctures, and unique ‘sifting roof,’ the centre presents a dynamic terrain. It features undulating, mountainous structures that serve as enclosed programs and climbing areas for people of all ages. By integrating spaces for learning and play, the centre creates a captivating and interactive environment for the entire community. The project goes beyond conventional design approaches by embracing the idea of ‘tending’ and viewing the urban environment as a carefully cultivated ‘garden.’ The centre incorporates architectural elements that parallel plants and gardening activities through explorations and experiments, resulting in a captivating and dynamic form.
Site Visits
Kingsland Basin is a peaceful location with lovely apartments and beautiful canal boats. These boats resemble floating gardens on the water. Nearby, a small plaza and seating area is perfect for relaxation. The site used to be part of an abandoned warehouse, visible from Kingsland Road, which can be demolished. Kingsland Road is a busy street with London buses, but it can sometimes be affected by rowdy behaviour at night.
Site Elevation and Section
The 30m by 62m site links the serene Kingsland Basin to the lively Kingsland main street. The goal is to connect these different landscapes while maintaining the canal's peaceful atmosphere. The site can become a community gathering place, encouraging people of all ages to interact. The landscape should be designed like a vibrant garden. Instead of a traditional and rigid structure, the architecture should be dynamic and diverse, akin to a flourishing plant in a garden.
The Playscape Garden Massing Process
A framework of spatial moments is established to define gardening activities. Exploring the relationship between architectural elements and plants led to dynamic experiments in form generation. By experimenting with geometric shapes inspired by gardening animations, the design aims to create a playscape garden where people can socialise, relax, play, and learn together. The vision is to develop a vibrant community hub encompassing learning, a library, arts, and community events, providing public access to knowledge and culture.
Moiré Effect: Optical Interference, And The Physic Of Wave Superposition
Moiré effect refers to an optical interference when two (or more) overlapping patterns pass in and out of alignment. Such optical interference can only be produced when the two patterns are geometrically periodic and superimposed. A geometrically periodic pattern can be expressed as a wave function. In such a sense, the moiré effect is the physic of wave superposition. Thus, the basis for the optical interference of a moiré effect is the periods and the frequencies (and orientations for more complicated patterns) of the superimposed patterns. In this project’s context, I focused on producing the moiré effect with a grid system, essentially linear periodic patterns of vertical and horizontal lines. A grid system follows the same logic of line moiré.
