Bribing Children

Warning* (This is an exert from a paper I have to write for school so the tone is more formal than usual)

Tsukisamu Park is a large park located in the south of the city of Sapporo, imbedded in a residential neighbourhood with a few surrounding shops and restaurants. It was designed in the 1960s and is now in need of a revamping, with its three large baseball fields sorely underused, and the children’s play areas fallen into disrepair. While I was doing a field survey of the park, one thing that struck me was how closely it was connected to the surrounding neighbourhood. Just a very narrow street separated the yard-less doors of houses and restaurants, to the open green space. 

We were introduced to the project context and background and were taken to the site to do an initial survey. We then began construction on a very large (roughly 3 m2) model of the existing park; out of wood, plasticine, styrofoam, and paper, for the most part. Making the model very enjoyable and helped me understand the geography of the site as a whole, and its context. Our next big task was to help in the first workshop that the firm was to host for the park. Most of the employees of the firm assisted in the two-day workshop to lead the building of a snow fortress in the park. 

The concept for children’s play in the park, similar to that of Myonnoka and most of Takano’s children’s parks, is to create an environment for creative play, rather than providing static playground equipment. The programming utilizes the commissioned park play leader to help guide the children to creating their own play opportunities with recycled material or naturally occurring materials from the park; such as a jungle gym woven in the trees with rope, or a tree fort constructed out of abandoned timer. The aim of the workshop was to encourage passing by children to join in the building, and demonstrate to parents and children the potential for more creative play using simple tools and naturally occurring materials (in this case snow). 

This workshop was part of a small snow festival the park was hosting, in which the firm contributed a booth where children and their parents could come in to warm up and enjoy a hot drink and describe what they liked and didn’t about building the snow fort, and what they wanted to see or do in their new park. Because of the language barrier, I spent most of the two days building the structure and setting up the booth. I spent about half a day sculpting a face out of snow for above the main entrance of the fort. We are continuing to work on the design of the park and are now to do a quick charette style park design ourselves, to be presented at a staff meeting next week.