The task was to design and build a bamboo playspace for people with all kind of abilities, especially the children, residing at the LEEDO Peace Home (a rescued street children’s charity organization in Dhaka, Bangladesh)The playspace offers a central open space, where children can play or organize festivals and performances. The whole structure can accommodate around 300 audiences at different levels. Specific play features were designed for therapeutic exercises for differently able children encouraging peer support. Younger children can engage in suitable play features, like swing, hanging rope-bridge etc, in a safe place with elders’ supervision, while older children find themselves in more adventurous zone of climbing wall, spider web. The semi-shaded decks of the playspace can held different sorts of workshops or hang-outs of people of different age group of the nearby communities.
For the opening of the space, we intended to test how the place can be multifunctional, and communal. A half day art & design festival for children called “ESHO KHELI” (Let’s play) was held.
Phase 1: Initial idea
Paraa invited diverse groups of creatives to experiment and use the space. This is a fundamentally important aspect of the project - to show the potential of a space and the importance of creative arts for holistic human development. A group of artists from performance art and theatre, fashion houses and fashion designers and a group of beat-boxer responded to the call to present their artworks and explored the space, engaging the audience.The children of Leedo peace home developed a theatrical performance ‘Harano Rajjyo’ (The lost kingdom) in collaboration with Prachyanat after practicing for weeks.
The play space existed for four years, with a series of innovative programmes to accompany it over the year.
Phase 2: Model presentation to the children of LEEDO Peace Home
Phase 3: The project was built in collaboration with Paraa at the site of Bosilla,Dhaka beside Leedo Peace home.