Šmartinski Park Playground

Šmartinski Park used to be a vast area of informal allotment gardens. In 2007, the clearing of gardening beds and sheds was announced and executed in a close cooperation between mayor’s office, municipal officials and public companies. After clearing of the area only a flowering lawn mixture was sown and the area was open to public use while the design process started. Due to its vast dimension the transformation into a park was to be gradual. In the first phase only two basic walkthrough paths were erected, the terrain was reshaped and new large trees were planted while remnants of existing fruit trees were left on site. The playground was designed and built later. The initial idea was to provide a play area for all. The playground location was planned carefully, with a proper relation to the cemetery and out of impacts of main road and power lines. The design team’s previous experiences with school and nursery kids participating in various play projects were used as most valuable baseline for a new design concept. The design itself was to provide spaciousness, playful terrain, water feature in combination with sand, lots of vegetation and play equipment with a diverse set of functions - a high climbing net with a view being one of its essentials.

Playful water feature and path design were moulded to the park layout, adding soft curved circular shapes with high play value to the existing straight functional park paths.

Authors: LUZ, d.d. - Maja Simoneti, Urška Kranjc, Klara Sulič, Sergej Hiti, Tomaž Stupar – Krajinaris, Dušan Stupar, Tanja Maljevac, Maša Šorn
Photo Credit: Luka Vidic
Country: Slovenia