Making sport more accessible: Numuga turns the empty ball court into a field of skill stations

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Q: What is "Making sport more accessible: Numuga turns the empty ball court into a field of skill stations" about?

This article covers topics related to Architecture. A triangulated court of target walls, hoops and rebound arcs lets beginners practise passing and aiming without waiting for a full match.

A triangulated court of target walls, hoops and rebound arcs lets beginners practise passing and aiming without waiting for a full match.

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UNI Editorial published Results under Architecture on Oct 19, 2026

Most neighbourhood ball courts share one quiet requirement: enough people for a match. Without two full teams, the painted lines go unused, the hoop stands idle, and the fenced asphalt waits behind its railings. This proposal starts from that problem. It treats a sports court as a place to practise skills rather than a pitch reserved for games, and that one change runs through every part of the design.

Making sport more accessible was designed by Chris Moore of Numuga, and received Editor's Choice at Playground - E | 2021. The pitch is direct: play eight or more sports in the same space at the same time, and learn the basics of each without having to take part in a match.

Behind the Railings, a Court Built for Ten

The project's starting image is an existing asphalt basketball court seen through iron bars, scattered with autumn leaves, with a mural wall and housing blocks behind it. Overlapping lines for several sports are painted across a single surface, and all of them assume organised, team-sized play. The photograph is deliberately bleak, and it works as an argument: the space exists, but very little in it invites someone who arrives alone or with one friend.

Numuga's answer is to keep the footprint of a court and change what it is for. According to the brief, passing, controlling, catching, throwing and aiming are skills that carry over to many sports, so the court is reorganised around those actions rather than around any single game's rules. That reframing positions the space as a way into sport for beginners while still giving experienced players somewhere to sharpen technique.

Existing asphalt basketball court seen through iron railings, with fallen autumn leaves, a mural wall and housing blocks behind. Image: Chris Moore

A Plan Drawn in Coral, Black and Green Triangles

The site plan drops the familiar rectangle. The zone, labelled 28m by 32m, is set out on a square grid, and each cell is filled with a coral, black or dark green square or a diagonal half. The result is a ragged, pinwheeling outline where triangular tongues of surface reach outward and trees fill the notches at the edges. A large coral field in the middle serves as open ground, and the darker cells around it hold individual pieces of equipment.

From above, the court reads less like a pitch and more like a set of rooms without walls. Each colour patch roughly defines a station, so one person can practise at a target wall while a small group shoots at the hoop a few metres away. The grid also hints at flexibility: the same cells could be extended, rearranged or cut back to suit a different plot. Numuga develops this idea of reworking the multi-use games area in its journal on the new MUGA.

Site plan drawing of the court as a grid of coral, black and green triangles, labeled 28m by 32m. Image: Chris Moore

Aerial rendering of the angular coral, black and green court surfaces with scattered wall panels and trees at the edges. Image: Chris Moore

Target Walls and Rebound Arcs as Solo Partners

At ground level, the equipment does the teaching. Dark green panels carry coral discs as targets, an orange wall is covered in a bubble texture that will kick a ball back at unpredictable angles, and another orange panel is cut with six round openings to aim through. A tall silver post with stacked circular cutouts and a curved metal bench-like arc sit near low rebound boards, and a single basketball hoop rises above it all. Each piece gives a lone player something to pass against, shoot at or receive from, which is exactly the job a missing teammate would do.

The palette is confident and the pieces have a graphic, almost product-like finish. That same finish drew the sharpest technical criticism. José de Villar Martinez, who judged the competition, valued the hybrid of sports and games and the grid of interchangeable parts, but questioned dark metal in direct sun and the dependence on ball games:

The idea of combining sports and games has an extra value. However the game interaction, is not considering the specifics of the site, specially trusting the games on ball related activities. The grid is an interesting idea for exchangeable pieces, but we doubt metalic structures painted in black under the sun as a safe game activity for children as they can reach very high tempartures, we should those decissions should be reconsidered.JOSÉ DE VILLAR MARTINEZ, Founder, DVCH DVCH DEVILLARCHACON Arquitectos, Mexico

Rendered play court with a dotted dark panel, orange bubble-textured wall and basketball hoop standing among trees on coral ground. Image: Chris Moore

Rendered view of a tall silver panel with circular cutouts beside a curved metal bench on coral and dark green paving. Image: Chris Moore

A Circular Enclosure, and the Question of the Edge

One of the most distinctive elements is a round, dark green enclosure set on its own triangle of surface, a small arena within the larger zone. Behind it, the target walls and hoop line up across the coral ground. The ring shows that the design can produce contained, intimate pieces of play, but it also makes clear how open the rest of the court is. Balls hit against panels with nothing behind them will travel, and the jagged outline that looks so lively in plan becomes a long, porous perimeter in use.

Carlos Chacón Pérez, who also judged the competition, raised both that boundary issue and a wider point about who the space actually serves:

The geometry and games of this playground are more sports oriented than play oriented. We believe that excludes a segment of children that engage in programs related to activities not based on sports. Besides the fact that many of the games require playing with a ball, demands a solution for the boundaries and the perimeter of the proposal that is not solved.CARLOS CHACÓN PÉREZ, Founder, DVCH DEVILLARCHACON Arquitectos, Mexico

Rendered circular dark green enclosure in the foreground with a hoop, dotted panels and a perforated orange wall behind. Image: Chris Moore

Why This Project Matters

The most useful idea here is the change of unit. Instead of designing for the match, Numuga designs for the drill: one pass, one throw, one shot at a target. That breaks a court's reliance on full teams and turns an underused piece of public infrastructure into somewhere a single child, a pair of friends or a skilled player can each find something to do at the same time. The triangulated grid gives that idea a spatial form that could plausibly adapt to different sites.

The jury's objections are equally instructive. A playground built around the ball inherits the ball's problems: it needs a resolved edge, it favours children who already like sport, and its materials have to cope with sun and touch, not only look good in a render. The proposal is strongest as a challenge to the idle multi-use court and weakest where it assumes that every kind of play is sport. Projects that go next could keep its station-based logic while opening those stations to climbing, hiding, building and imagining.