Sunday, September 4, 2011

Childs Play in the Sunday Telegraph

New approaches to playgrounds bring imagination (and danger) back to playtime

"...Where does playground design go from here? The future might just lie in the one thing designers have spent the past ten years vilifying: brightly coloured plastic. Not even a concetre lover could claim Gillett Square in Hackney is a lovely place, but every afternoon, something extraordinary happens. From out of two giant dustbins, children take a big loop, a cone, a wave, a curved section of wall, a mound and some long pieces of plastic like noodles. This is a Snug play set, designed by siblings Tim and Hattie Coppard, and its premise is that anywhere can be a playground.

Snugplay's essence is flexibility. Children can do whatever they want with the shapes, but they're designed to be awkward - nothing slots easily into anything else. They have to use their imagination and, because some of the pieces are pretty heavy, work together. Since its launch in 2008, the kits - costing £11,700 each - have been sold all over the world."

- John Preston, Sunday Telegraph STKids magazine, 14th September 2011. 

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