St Anne's Road Pocket Play park, Drummcondra Dublin
The small strip of lawn with a tree and 2 benches inspired the local community to redesign it as a community garden so it can function as:
-outdoor meeting place
- creative play for children
- sensory experience for children
- seating in a planted environment
- wall space for street artists
- biodiversity area and wildlife habitat
- a Drummcondra landmark
The Community approached DCC and Croke Park for funding and asked Sophie von Maltzan, Landscape Architect and Artist with Fieldwork& Strategies to help them put a funding application together and if successful develop a design together with the Community.
Funding was given in April 2015.
Community Design participation meetings were held sover 3 month.
The Pocket park was opened in Spring 2016, all play elements where built from a beech tree fallen in a previous winter storm.
It is a proto type experimental play space for Dublin’s Inner City, built from a beech tree fallen in a February storm
- the playgrounds design is influenced by it’s environment and reacts to it’s settings, it is site- specific
- natural play elements that provide children with physically challenging play opportunities
- the non- specific elements engage the childrens creativity and sense of adventure
- provide open ended play, encourages self expression and imagination
- the "no boundary fence" policy allows for interaction of peers
- mixture of seating and playing for everyone
- inexpensive and fast to build
- difficult to vandalise as heavy and solid elements which are also easy to replace
- lots of plants
- no concrete or other hard landscaping
Several workshops and maintenance and improvements event have been organised by the Community since then.
To see what the Park looks like now go to: facebook