Blaxland Riverside Park Playground

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RESEARCH BACKGROUND: James Mather Delaney (of which Anton James is a director) was commissioned by the Sydney Olympic Authority to design a 20,500m² playground for Blaxland Riverside Park in Homebush, Sydney. The park is one of a number that make up Sydney's Olympic Parklands. The playground worked with the dominant earthforms of cones, cuts and terraces established by Hargraves and Associates (the landscaping firm responsible for the site's masterplan). It opened in June 2012. RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION: The playground is a distinctive new project that maintains a dialogue with its context and creates play experiences that range from gentle to boisterous. A 200m long 3m high earth berm with conical voids and angular slices is the armature for play. It runs parallel to the existing 3 terraces and inverts the language of the existing conical fig mounds. Custom designed and proprietary items are built into and around the dominant earthform and include; a double flying fox, tunnel slides, ground mounted slides, a giant swing, climbing walls, tunnels, a suspended climbing net, a 12m high tree house, a sand pit and a water plaza with 170 jets. RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE: The project won the 2013 Jury Award in the international Architizer A+ Awards. The awards received 1500 entries from 100 countries and were judged by jury of 200 architects. The major media partner is the Wall Street Journal. It also won the 2012 NSW Australian Institute of Landscape Architects (AILA) Award for Excellence in Design. The project was covered in The Atlantic Monthy (7 May 2013) and Landscape Architecture Australia (Aug 2012 and Aug 2013). It was subsequently included in 'Extraordinary Playscapes' - a series of exhibitions in 2016-2017 that examined the history, science and art of playgrounds through 40 selected examples, and included in the exhibition catalogue. Curated by Design Museum Boston, it toured from Boston to San Francisco, Chicago and Portland, receiving extensive international media.