Wooden Playscapes by Atelier de Launay

Since 1971, Atelier de Launay have been creating extraordinary sculptural playscapes, mostly of wood, mostly in France.

"Creating a playground is not about placing prefabricated pieces. 
The planning of a playground should form a link between the people and the space. 
Designs come from specific histories and memories of people.   
Each site is given a special answer and a new story.   

To shelter, to lie down, to appear, to swing, to snuggle, to hide, to climb, to crawl, to cross a bridge, to discover, to fall, to get lost, to find, to go down, to go for a walk, to go through a tunnel, to go up, to hang from, to jump, to imagine stories, to make noise, to move, to play games, to perch, to roll, to run, to slide, to stride, to touch, to spin, to turn upside down, to watch, to step, to meet… 

These playgrounds go beyond typical play functions to awaken the active imaginations of all users, from children and teenagers to adults and the elderly.."

Too often when we think of using wood on the playground, we think simply of boards; surely the least interesting expression of what used to be a tree.   The other extreme is to refuse to alter the tree's 'treeness' at all, utilizing only stumps or rough trunk sections. Atelier de Launay celebrates all the possibilities of wood as a medium for playscapes, from climbing boards to realistic animals to Henry Moore-esque abstractions.  And their ideas about honoring site history and memory are ambitious; referencing such things as the the library of Rousseau and four of the artistic studies of Leonardo:  architecture, botany, anatomy, and drape.

Playgrounds are so strongly about the physical that intellectual pursuits don't naturally spring to mind as a design focus.  But I'm fascinated by the sophistication this 'layer of the mind' adds to the playspace, and thinking about how a child might gradually come to realize that the forms on which they are clambering were studied, long ago, by Leonardo;  or how grown-ups might consider the books Rousseau had in his library while their children play.  How might you add an intellectual layer to your playscape?

[Many thanks to Paris-based landscape architects sensomoto for introducing me to Atelier de Launay!]