'Toolkit' of Self-Resilience: A Modular Play Frame That Gives Agency Back to Children in Kutupalong

Most playgrounds arrive finished. Someone else chooses the slide, fixes the swing and pours the footing, and children use what they are given. 'Toolkit' of Self-Resilience rejects that sequence. Set in the Kutupalong refugee camp in Bangladesh, it proposes play as a framework rather than a product: a kit of parts that children and families can assemble, take apart, repair and reconfigure as their needs and their ground shift beneath them. The argument is that agency is part of the play equipment, and in a place defined by displacement, that is a sharp position to take.

The proposal was designed by Nurul Azman, Feeyz Mohammad, Lyana Ibrahim and Calvin Thoo and was recognized as an Editor's Choice entry in Re-imagining Play 2020. The team designs for children and adolescents in a camp shaped by tropical monsoons, cyclones, flooding and hilly terrain of soft clay. Timber and bamboo are already under heavy demand, and regulations favor temporary structures over permanent construction. Instead of fighting these limits, the designers turn them into the brief: if nothing can be permanent, make the architecture good at changing. The full entry is available on the project page.

A Two-Meter Cube as the Unit of Play

Everything starts from a modular base of roughly 2 x 2 x 2 meters, built from footings, columns, beams, floor panels and purpose-designed connecting joints. The opening axonometric shows how little the frame needs to become a place. Colored columns mark the corners, soft mats cover the ground and a length of hanging fabric gives the volume an edge, and families are already gathering around it. The cube works less as a building than as a coordinate system: it sets a consistent dimensional logic that every later addition can rely on.

The scale is the smart decision here. Kutupalong has few large continuous open spaces, so a single central playground would struggle to find a site. A unit this compact can slot into gaps throughout the dense settlement. In the team's site plan, play becomes distributed pockets of activity across the camp rather than one destination that some children can reach and others cannot.

Assembly as the First Game

The second drawing deserves the most attention because it shows the moment before the structure exists. A family lays out loose joints, colored poles and interlocking floor tiles while a child sits among the pieces. This is a construction kit at human scale, and the act of building is part of the programme. When the people who use a structure have also assembled it, they know how to fix it, move it and extend it, which matters in a camp where cyclones and floods can undo any installation.

The modular junctions do the quiet work. Vertical and horizontal members can meet in different arrangements, and secondary components can be inserted when needed, so the grid can expand sideways, rise a level or contract to suit a tight plot. Its architectural identity sits in the rules of connection rather than in any one final composition, which fits a context where the ground itself is unstable.

One Skeleton, Many Curricula

Fitted out for active play, the frame takes on a climbing wall, monkey bars, a rope and a hanging bag, and children use it at full stretch. Swap a few infill pieces and the same bays hold planter pots, a bead abacus panel and a climbing wall, while younger children play on the mats below. The primary structure stays the same; only the attachments change. That is a more resourceful approach than building a separate shelter for each activity, especially where materials are scarce.

The pairing also blurs the line between play and education in a useful way. The abacus panel sits beside the climbing holds, and the planters bring growing and care into the same footprint. For children whose schooling is likely to be interrupted, a structure that can shift between gross motor play, counting and gardening becomes an informal learning landscape that does not depend on a classroom being available.

Fabric, Shade and the Upper Rail

Drape fabric over two frames and they become shaded rooms. In the fourth axonometric a mother and her children sit and draw inside, sheltered from the sun. The tectonic move is simple, but it widens the project's reach from play to rest, and from children alone to the adults who look after them. Soft enclosure gives a measure of privacy and calm that a bare climbing frame cannot.

The elevation shows the vertical potential of the system. A two-level frame carries net swings and a platform seat, and silhouetted figures sit along the upper rail. Going up lets the structure hold more activity without taking more ground, an important gain on a crowded hillside. It also offers what few spaces in the camp can: a raised vantage point, a place to sit apart and look out over the settlement.

Why This Project Matters

Humanitarian design often treats temporariness as a weakness to manage. 'Toolkit' of Self-Resilience treats it as a design material. By committing to a consistent module and a well-considered joint, the team produces a system that can respond to monsoons, regulation and scarce resources without falling back on a fixed, imported form. The drawings make the case clearly because they show the same frame being built, climbed, planted, draped and inhabited.

Its larger contribution is the shift in authorship. Children and families are not the end users of a finished playground; they assemble and adapt the environment they play in. In a setting where so many decisions are made for people, a structure that invites them to decide how it should stand is a meaningful architectural gesture, and a strong model for designing play wherever conditions refuse to stay still.

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Project credits: Toolkit Re-imagining Play 2020 (uni.xyz).