Squareplay

red dot: best of the best
red dot award: design concept 2007

design:

Jasmina Fercek, Tjasa Bavcon, Katja Burger

Squareplay is a tactile, changeable playground for children and their parents. It is a didactic tool, an empirical item, and an object of entertainment, creation, recreation and relaxation.

Squareplay has the shape of a regular square. It is double layered, so the body can slip into it through the rift-like opening. The adult body can be stretched out inside the square with the head emerging from the opening. The structure uses the idea of coating/lamination, incorporating three different materials together: the surface material, the in-between material, and the inner-side material. They provide water repellence, perspiration absorbency, easy drying, stain release, softness, lightness, and breathability.

Squareplay as a didactic object.
Children of various ages can use Squareplay – either in the home or outside, in the kindergarten or on the playground. The simple quadratic shape is free from any obvious visual associations, so it can be transformed into many things. That stimulates the child’s imagination, creative thinking and investigation, prompting the child to become the creator of the playground. An important experience of Squareplay is the direct bodily exploration of space. How can one make space (for hiding, playing, sleeping…) from the simple square? The child could also learn about spatial conception by watching others (a friend, a parent…) play with it. Furthermore, Squareplay could be useful for physically challenged children.

Squareplay as a playful and sociable object.
Squareplay is not just a playground for children, but also for parents. Adults could reinvent play as a way of entertaining, relaxing, creating, even working. Squareplay teaches us how to play and live together in a creative, pleasurable way.

Squareplay as an emotional and aesthetic object.
The experience with Squareplay can evoke different pleasurable feelings in the user, but at the same time, it provides for physical and mental activation. As a tactile, intimate object, it reminds us how nice it is to feel intimacy with something or somebody. Profoundly, Squareplay can evoke the embrace of womb-like space. The body and the object become one being and transform together into different shapes and expressions – as if part of a dance performance.

Squareplay as a portable object.