Play area at Glade Hill Primary School, Nottingham

Children's Play Areas
Ceramic work
Timber and Steel
Lighting
Water Fountains

More about the Glade Hill Primary School play area

Site at Glade Hill Primary School, before construction

Is it a castle, or a space ship, a ranch, a submarine, a dungeon, a house, a rocket, a mountain? The tower in our interactive play space can be many things to many people. When we asked the children how they played, we quickly learned that they had countless different games. To design a play space for them, we would need to need to create fantasy space for the little ones and an exciting, physically challenging area for the older ones, with lots of variety for all ages.

The play tower is 4 metres tall with 2 storeys. The top floor can be accessed by a staircase and a slightly scary curved climbing ramp. It is fun to run up the stairs and play on the balcony. Children can scale the horizontal bars which cover two sides of the tower, and then climb through into the ground floor. At one corner of the tower a line of ‘Roman Rings’ hang from a great timber beam. Next to it there is a swinging rope bridge that rises as you walk along it, attached to a small timber tower, exit at top speed down the slide. There is also a bouncy ‘wobble board’ and around the corner, a climbing wall. We built a series of multi-purpose mobile ‘interactive’ boxes too, so that children could physically create and adapt their own environments through using the system of inter-locking pieces and walkways. Extra character is added to the play area by the use of environmentally friendly green oak and Douglas fir. To top it off, the tower has a turf roof.

We listened hard to what the children had to say; and the play area was an instant hit. Our spaces are designed to work well for both adults and children. Through the use of carefully chosen natural materials and attractive colours, we hope that adults will like it too.