PLAY: planting the social DNA for development

While researching for my master's thesis I reviewed this DVD by KSPR productions called MY PLAYGROUND.

It documents, in part, the design and development of the world's first "Parkour Park" in collaboration with Kragh & Berglund and features also collaborations between traceurs and Bjarke Ingels Group. Since then more have opened in London, Sao Paulo and LA. Regardless of the disciplinarian politics about weather parkour is a sport or discipline, to be conducted at purpose built facilities or not, is kind of irrelevant. This is a pretty cool development.


But of perhaps more profound interest, is why:
The CPH City and Port Development are undergoing a HUGE revamp of the Portside area in Nordhavnen, comprising of over 2,000,000m2 and intending to accomodate 40,000 residents and infastructure to support a further 40,000 jobs. It's huge and it involves a lot of money.

Yet one of the first things that CPH City and Port Development has built; is infastructure for play activities. A strange move from those of us here in Australia who are used to completely speculative development. *Surely this is just a northern european abberation bought about by their cultural and economic excesses*.

Hardly.

They just know what they want. They know what value they want to achieve in the city.
A major tool which the CPH City and Port Development are investigating, is the use of iterative temporary spaces, social and cultural incubators, if you will. It's a very thorough and thought out strategy.

In the words of Jens Kramer Mikkelsen (KSPR, 2010), Managing Director for the CPH City and Port Development Authority:
"What can we do while we are building the city? USe the spaces that aren't being used yet, - and create some life and traditions before the space will be construction sites. And test different possibilities of activity."
His views are echoed by the Mayor's of Copenhagen, including Klaus Bondham:
"I like to see that the spaces in the city are being used. Because that is what they are there for. THere is no doubt that if there is a lot of positive behaviour in our city's space, THen that behaviour will take the positive power within that city space, and to get as many people in that city space with positive behaviour, that is certainly something that parkour amongst other can tribute [sic] to, because it gives us something to look at." (KSPR, 2010)

The Plug'n'Play Park is situated on the edge of this new development and for the next two years will be used to test and develop strategies for social and cultural play activities within the built context. They will iterate activities and architectural spaces and forms which accomodate them, firstly to stimulate the area and the wider psycho-geographical assosciation of the space with cultural value, and secondly; will use it as a testing ground for these strategies before they are deployed throught the rest of the 2million m2 development.

From the website:
”Plug n Play” is a concept taken from the computer world, but in Ørestad it has been transferred to an urban setting. The underlying idea is to enable users to readily establish, develop and test new forms of culture and sport in the area. Moreover, users should be able to ”log in to” the various activities with ease and without any obligations. The area therefore provides access to water, power, lavatories and storage facilities, and its location near the metro makes it easy to get to and from. The new activity area is a temporary provision intended to breathe life into the emerging new quarter. The plan is that the project should exist until 2014. If desired, the most popular activities may then be moved to other locations and adapted to the general development of Ørestad South. Several of the activity spaces and facilities were developed in conjunction with representatives of various sports, for example the parkour team Team JiYo and Vesterbro Rulleskøjteklub (rollerblading club).

Better yet, they have taken into account some basic urban design princpiles. From Lynch's "Image of the city", play spaces are linked along paths, creating ludic tradjectories scaled by the intensities and forms of activity. "Low Road" (Brand: 1994) architectural spaces are provided for clubs and groups to occupy and modify for their own purposes. Skateboarding, trial riding, free gardening (AKA guerilla gardening) and parkour are all accomodated side-by-side in spaces that people can really call 'their own'.

It goes to show, with the right attitude from development, authorities, and designers; that the provision of free play space integrated with the urban fabric is not an uninformed flight of fancy, but rather an economically and socially innovative strategy towards the development of the city.

I can't wait to glean lessons from Nordhavnen and the CPH Port and City Development Authority. And I shouldn't have to wait that long. It would seem that we already are...