The design of this modular playscape highlights how creativity and design can improve urban environments and inspire play.

The three piece installation was commissioned by Young Urbanists South Africa, @young_urbanists, in partnership with Urban ThinkTank Empower,  @utt_empower. It was designed by Jeffrey James, and Stonecast was asked to manufacture the different pieces. The pieces make up part of South Africa’s first street experiment on Langa’s Lerotholi Avenue, in collaboration with the Masakhe Foundation and the City of Cape Town.

The playscape is a set of architectural, and flexible, concrete pieces set in the courtyard of the new Empower housing project. The playscape blurs the line between sculpture and play area and demarcate the boundaries of a public space. Perhaps more importantly, the play space is the expression of a decade of thinking about the best way to get children and adults to engage in a common communal space using just different pieces of cast concrete in a flexible seating arrangement.

You can read more about the project and its launch at Design Week South Africa 2024 here.