Finalist: PlaySpace International Design Competition

Hosted by the Delaware Valley Association for the Education of Young Children and the Community Design Collaborative, SALT DESIGN STUDIO's team was selected as a finalist for the international PlaySpace Design Competition.

Our team’s submission, titled “Neighborhood PlayBook”, unearths the potential for the Blanche A. Nixon library in the Cobbs Creek neighborhood of Philadelphia to evolve into a flexible, shared public landscape. Using elements of scale, repetition and surprise, our team offered a design strategy that integrates play and learning into an outdoor, civic space. Three primary pieces - the Hex block, the Storyboard, and the Raindrop - are used to shape and animate the space, and to create multiple journeys through the site.

As a tactical Playbook, these strategies can be applied to similar urban sites with fundamental neighborhood institutions where play, civic engagement, and multi-generational use are encouraged and activated through thoughtful, community-minded design.

Collaborators: Ian Smith Design Group, Jacobs Engineering Group (formerly CH2M), Kirk Fromm Design + Illustration, It’s All Made Up LLC, Eleanor Luken, Sharon Stampfer, Karyn Williams