At a City Intersections lecture in summer 2013 a mother vividly illustrated how one’s relationship with a city changes when becoming a parent. She showed a video which she made by attaching a camera to her buggy, filming the ground on her hazardous walk through Dublin.
A lot could be said here about the difficulties in navigating prams past crowds on narrow footpaths or countless driveway kerbs. We could discuss the lack of (safe and drug free) playgrounds in central Dublin. But in this month’s issue we decided to be more positive and present an exemplary project which has moved past the “what if” stage and is soon to be realised – the Play Park Ballyfermot.
The visionary play and skate park for ‘The Lawns’ in Le Fanu Park, Ballyfermot is due for completion in 2017. In partnership with The Matheson Foundation and Dublin City Council, the Irish Architecture Foundation launched an open design competition in September last year, to which community engagement was a key element. The programme included numerous public events and activities addressing universal design issues involving over 350 locals, both in the development of the design brief and the final short listed designs.
In February the competition was won by Relational Urbanism (relationalurbanism.com), a multidisciplinary design team from London. Their carefully designed artificial topography caters for a variety of age groups and their needs providing a skate-park for BMX, skate, scooter and roller-skate activities, segregated park land for dog walkers, joggers and strollers as well as seating, lighting, water features, discovery pods for kids, a tree top walk, swings, slides, nets and much more.
The Play Park Ballyfermot and the recently featured community-led Cork Street Park will both be welcome additions for Dublin families, hopefully marking an era of high quality open public spaces for the whole community and in particular the more vulnerable members of our society – kids.
To engage and learn more about the project visit facebook.com/playparkballyfermot
To suggest a topic for a future edition or to simply learn more about What if Dublin visit us on Twitter @What_if_Dublin or email us at whatifdublin@gmail.com
(IMAGE CREDIT: Visualisation/Photograph: Relational Urbanism/ IAF)
Words & Images: What if Dublin Team
