Light, Sound and Air: A Two-Metre Module That Lets Refugee Children Author Their Own Playground

Q: Who wrote "Light, Sound and Air: A Two-Metre Module That Lets Refugee Children Author Their Own Playground"?

This article was written by UNI Editorial and published on uni.xyz, a platform for design professionals and creative thinkers.

Q: What is "Light, Sound and Air: A Two-Metre Module That Lets Refugee Children Author Their Own Playground" about?

This article covers topics related to Playground, Youth Architecture, Experiential Architecture, Modular Building, Environmental Architecture, Conceptual Architecture, Educational Building. A cut and rotated cube becomes cave, stage, lookout and acoustic instrument, giving children in camps a playground they can read and rewrite.

Most playgrounds tell children what to do: swing here, slide there, climb this ladder in this direction. Light, Sound and Air refuses that script. Its premise is that a platform can be a stage, a sheltered corner can be a cave, a tower can be a lookout, and a trumpet-shaped object can be an instrument, depending entirely on who arrives and what they imagine. The architecture sets up conditions for play and then steps back, which is a quietly radical position for a design aimed at children whose lives are otherwise heavily prescribed.

Designed by Hanbyul Oh, Gonzalo Iturriaga Atala and Kazi Fida Islam, the proposal was recognised as a Runner-up in Re-imagining Play 2020. It addresses refugee children, for whom free movement, outdoor exploration, privacy and contact with natural phenomena can be severely restricted. Rather than delivering a kit of equipment, the team proposes a modular architectural system that can be scattered across a camp, from open communal grounds to the narrow alleys between shelters.

Horns That Turn Wind and Voices Into Play

Rendering of a timber-framed play structure with pink, green and yellow funnel horns, a child seated on a beam under blue sky

Rendering of a bamboo-like play frame with round log ends, colored horns and children walking across a sunlit timber deck

The first renderings introduce the project's most memorable gesture: pink, green and yellow funnel horns perched on a light timber frame. They read as toys, but they do serious work. Sound is one of the three elements named in the title, and these acoustic objects invite children to call to one another, listen, and discover that their voices can travel and change. A child seated on a beam, or a group crossing a sunlit deck, becomes part of an instrument the size of a building.

This connects directly to the brief the team set themselves: six needs covering experiencing nature, encountering varied spatial structures, modularity, expressing emotion, stimulating the five senses and maximising movement. The horns sit at the intersection of several of these at once. They encourage communication without demanding it, and they give expression a physical outlet that does not require words or a shared language.

One Cut Cube, Many Spatial Outcomes

Rendering of a timber play structure with large round discs and colored panel walls, a child walking through dappled sunlight

Underneath the colour lies a disciplined geometry. The team began with a cube-like volume of roughly two metres, then cut and manipulated one side to produce a component whose character shifts with orientation. One module makes a partially enclosed retreat; two form a semi-open room; several, rotated, paired, stacked and linked, generate larger collective spaces. The large round discs and coloured panel walls in this view show how that grammar plays out at eye level, with surfaces that filter light and frame passages rather than simply enclosing them.

The strength here is repeatability. Instead of designing a single object for a single site, the project offers a set of rules that produce different results each time. The site drawings make the point clearly: larger aggregations occupy open playground areas, while smaller configurations slot into alley-like conditions where conventional play infrastructure would never fit. In a camp, where space is fragmented and contested, that adaptability is the difference between a proposal and a usable one.

Enclosed Walkways as Places to Hide and Recover

Interior rendering of an enclosed timber walkway with diagonal bracing, purple roof panels and a child standing beside a perforated screen

The interior rendering of the enclosed walkway shifts the mood. Diagonal timber bracing, purple roof panels and a perforated screen produce a tunnel that is protected but never sealed, with light breaking through in patterns. A child standing alone beside the screen captures a need that playground design often ignores: the desire for a temporary private corner. For children living in crowded shelters, a few square metres where they can withdraw without disappearing may matter as much as any climbing frame.

The designers are careful about what they claim for these spaces. They do not suggest that architecture can clinically treat trauma. Instead, they frame the playground as a supportive setting for autonomy, sensory engagement and moments of emotional calm, a complement to professional psychological care rather than a replacement for it. That restraint makes the proposal more credible, and these varying degrees of enclosure are where the idea becomes tangible.

Climbing Toward Plants, Mesh and Open Sky

Rendering of an upper play platform with timber posts, planter boxes and mesh panels, looking over horn-topped decks under cloudy sky

Rendering of a tall timber tower with mesh walls and funnel horns rising above a cluster of play decks under a blue sky

The final views go vertical. An upper platform with planter boxes and mesh panels looks over a field of horn-topped decks, and a tall tower with mesh walls rises above the cluster like a lookout. Height brings the movement the brief calls for, along with the experience of air and changing light that the project's title promises. Mesh walls keep the climb visually open, so the tower reads as a frame for wind and sky rather than a solid mass.

The planter boxes may be the most telling detail. The team lists planting among the activities children are invited into, alongside climbing, hiding and gathering, and growing something carries particular weight where contact with nature is scarce. By building soil into the upper levels of the structure, the design makes nature something children care for, not just something they pass by.

Why This Project Matters

Light, Sound and Air shows how much spatial variety can come from a deliberately simple system. A single cut cube, repeated and reoriented, yields caves, stages, towers, tunnels and instruments, and it does so at a scale that can follow the irregular geography of a refugee camp. The project treats architecture as an interface between the child and the world, tuned to the elements in its name, rather than as equipment to be installed and forgotten.

Just as importantly, it respects its users. By leaving the final form open, the designers give children something they are rarely offered in displacement: the authority to decide what a place means. Paired with an honest account of what design can and cannot do for wellbeing, that openness makes this Runner-up entry a thoughtful model for play in places that need it most.