Client: Camden Active Spaces, Camden Council / NHS
Site: London, UK (2014)
Designer: Wayward and erect architecture
Contractors: Blakedown and Made from Scratch
Torriano Juniors and Torriano Infants are two separate schools, with a large outdoor landscape divided by a high brick wall. As the majority of the students at the Infants school progress to the Juniors school, they have the distinct experience of playing on both sides of the wall, longing to run between them. Through workshops with the students, we discovered each side of the wall contained two magical lands, The Cloud Kingdom (Infants) and the Earth Kingdom (Juniors).
The Cloud Kingdom is a soft, bouncy and dream-like, with ladders to the skies. We created a soft, lush landscape embedded with trampolines and a large-cloud hovering in a grove of trees, constructed from a frame of circular steel tubes and shrouded in white climbing nets.
The Earth Kingdom is rugged and wild. The world was divided by an earthquake, leaving large fragments of land that can be traversed, climbed and explored. Large towers have fallen on their sides and trees have fallen creating elevated walkways.
The two kingdoms are brought together by a new shared outdoor classroom that bisects the wall, creating a magic portal between the worlds.
These playgrounds are part of the Camden Active Spaces programme, a commission to create challenging, innovative structures within schools that form the basis for new and exciting programmes of physical activity that inspire young people and their families to become more active and healthy.
Awarded the Making Space, Children in Scotland Award (2016), The New London Architecture Award (2015), BALI Award (2015), and shortlisted for the Camden Design Award (2015).