Parco Bassani Raimondi, Bardolino (I)

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Sandbox / Playground scheme and rendering (above)

Open space rehabilitation,

Bardolino (VR), Italy, 2012

The project for a park inside the centre of the small town of Bardolino seeks a balance between safety and pedagogic issues.

It builds a space that provides at once visual control by adults, and an adequate separation of the various activities: the connection between two parts of the center, games for different ages, and the existing basket ground.

The proposal blends these requirements with the character of the place, part of a historic garden, with interesting existing trees (palm, olives, ...), and a low budget.

The design of play grounds is historically dominated by two opposite models:

- the sandbox, a fenced and enclosed space where adults control the children, and determine location an type of the games;

- the playground, a wide area characterized by the materials and the surfaces of objects, maybe populated by animals and plants, where children have the opportunity to freely develop skills and creativi.

The proposed spatial device provides both the safety of a sandbox and the complexity of a playground.

Sandbox islands are cut within a larger playground, and connected by a pedestrian path.

Their elliptical shape is made of different materials, like gravel, sand, and bark.

Games, located into circular anti-traumatic surfaces, populate them.

The existing benches are relocated around the sandboxes, allowing a direct control of children by parents or elderly people.

The entire park around them works as a playground, including the trees, the sandboxes, the lawn, the sloped ground around the trees to recover their roots, the centr

In this way the two models, each suited to the requirements of the Administration, bring their advantages the to life within the park: security, control, variety, different gaming experiences.

The result is a diverse playful environment, where different generation can spend their spare and playful time in different activities.