Metatopia Playground

Metatopia Playground with Urban Farming

INTRODUCTION

Metatopia Playground is a modular system with interchangeable play elements.  These elements are categorized into playing, farming, resting, and connecting contents.  Playing features include swings, seesaws, roundabouts, trampolines, climbing nets, interactive media caves, and many more.  Farming features include various greenery settings that support urban farming and agricultural education.  Resting features are designed to foster social interaction, meditation, and mindfulness exercises.  Connecting features are lateral and vertical connection points that also act as meeting points.

Metatopia Playground with Enormous Variety of Play Elements

The modular system of Metatopia Playground allows the setup to be changed easily in the longer run.  Features can be easily added and rolled out in the future by adding or replacing the modules.  Play elements are also interchangeable within each module to update or modify its playing, farming, and resting contents. They can be prefabricated off site for mass production before being connected together and stacked up to become a maze-like play structure on site.

Metatopia Playground with Maze-like Structure

Hand Sketch of Design Concept 

PEANUT & DICE

Designed with the goal to create an all-inclusive playground for the upcoming era, the project is inspired by the enormous variety of shapes and sizes of peanuts. The Peanut Modules are developed into spherical peanut shapes that are stackable like Lego blocks. While the peanut pods provide safe enclosures to the kernels, the play elements are also protected by the spherical peanut shells that are constructed by layered enclosures of wicker weaving meshes supported by bamboo and rattan frames.  Similar to the kernels within peanut pods, the interchangeable play elements are placed inside the spherical peanut shells.  These Peanut Modules host multi-activities like playing, farming, and resting.

Module Catalog

In order to provide connection points between the Peanut Modules and between the stacking layers, Dice Modules are created to act as climbing structures and meeting points.  The Dice Modules provide lateral connections to all four planar directions as well as up and down vertical directions. 

Stacking Configuration Studies 

For the site of 30m in width and 45m in length, 29 modules are used to create Metatopia Playground.  Within these 29 modules, 7 of them are Dice Modules and 22 of them are Peanut Modules.  After a few rounds of configuration studies, 16 types of Peanut Modules are used to achieve the desirable cascading effect and amoeba-like layout. A set of rules is developed throughout the stacking progress to govern the logic and strategies behind just like a chess game.

Here is a list of rules for the stacking game:

1. There should be no gap in between each Peanut Module and Dice Module:

2. Modules on upper level cannot cantilever out of the lower level: 

3. There should be at least 1 Dice Module placed on the edge to serve as an entrance: 

4. All Peanut Modules should attach to at least 1 Dice Module for circulation access:

MATERIALITY 

Materials of the Metatopia Playground are selected with heavy emphasis on sustainability and durability.  The primary structure supporting all modules are built with bamboo and rattan, which are both very eco-friendly with high self-generation rate. A layer of secondary structure made by wicker weaving mesh with various density and transparency acts as a safety net and provides an unobstructed line of sight for the parents to monitor the kids within distance across the modules.

For the content features inside the shells, larger pieces were created from wood covered with different densities of reconstituted foam. Smaller pieces are solid foam. Relatively light but durable materials are preferred so that the content can be updated, changed, and modified easily.  Soft finishing is applied to provide a layer of cushion all around as a safety buffer.

Circulation Diagram

CIRCULATION & OPERATION

While being a multi-generation interactive playground, different user paths and age appropriate zones are introduced within the project to ensure safety and comfort for children at play.  Entry points and circulation paths are indicated for children between 2 to 5 years old and those who are above 5 years old.  Young children who are between 2 to 5 years old are encouraged to explore all features on the ground level.  In order to strike a balance between physical, social skill development and attraction to the digital world, digital activities like interactive media are reserved for older children.  Hence, the interactive media caves are placed at the highest point of the playground to naturally filter out younger children and provide enough physical challenges to older kids who see the media caves as the ultimate epic features and trophy rewards for getting to the top.  

The modules can also be disconnected at times when social distancing is required.  The openings of the Peanut Modules and the Dice Modules can easily be closed off to allow social activities at a safe distance. The maze-like structure with designated entry points provides easy control over occupancy rate and access when the number of children have to be limited or when the playground needs to be closed off completely during pandemic time.  The highly adaptive modular system of Metatopia Playground comes with many operation flexibilities and endless possibilities.