Camden Active Spaces project was a ground-breaking Public Health initiative to deliver challenging and intriguing active spaces to several Camden schools with the specific goal of increasing pupils’ physical activity levels. A further aim of the preventative healthcare project was to also open the school playgrounds for the community outside school hours. 

​University College London’s Sports Scientists monitored  change in pupil activity levels before and after the installation of the new active spaces to provide important data for understanding the drivers for physical activity. It found that the measures considerably reduced sedentary times and (established through interviews) increased wellbeing through social interaction.

The outcome was published in various medical journals.

To overcome physical and mental separation between Torriano Juniors and Infants we played a game of borderball, throwing wishes for the playgrounds across to the other team, breaking down barriers between them and us and learning to laugh with each other about failure.

We engaged with pupils, teachers and parents to target the most inactive user groups and inform each site specific design. Narratives were developed for the active landscapes to draw in inherently less active or confident children through games of imagining and roleplay. 

At Torriano Juniors School the Earthling kingdom nestles in a landscape of mounds into which an earthquake ripped climbable crevices. Earthlings explore the overgrown ruined city, which has fallen into their landscape as they move around a wide variety of routes. 

The Torriano Infants School playground has become the cloud kingdom. Cloud creatures emerge from a dense undergrowth, bounce from one trampoline cloud to another and scale up into the sky in the white cloud climbing structure.

At Torriano Juniors we were commissioned to design a cooking space in a Victorian Shelter adjacent to the playground and food growing area. This enabled the school to address other aspects of Healthy Living and provide cooking lessons as part of the curriculum.

At Acland Burghley Secondary School we explored the students’ relationship with objects across the playground. The picnic lawn is a subversion of the only exiting feature in their existing playgrounds – the picnic bench. It is enlarged, stacked and distorted to create a parkour and climbing landscape.

The Carlton Primary School playground has been settled by a new community. Its rapid growth has resulted in a vibrant collection of overlapping dwellings that form a complex urban landscape that its inhabitants must navigate every day. 

The structure is extremely space efficient fitting onto the site of four previous car parking spaces.