rellam . photos: © German Cabo
This playground is located in Balsa de Ves, a village with a population of 131. As such, it is a product of the particular conditions that drive the existence of small and decaying municipalities in Spain, an inevitably ambiguous and paradoxical form of the urban. It sits on the land that was once occupied by the school. Demolished in 2019, the building was devoted to multiple uses but education since the school closed in 1972. But still, children remain the target audience; the playground addresses a segment of the population that lacks in the village.
To negotiate this paradox, the elements that shape it have been designed in a deliberately anexact way. The yellow rubber surface extends to the perimeter in order to conceal its usual relation to kid’s playgrounds. Teeter-totters and roundabouts are hard to read. And the swings blend with the light fixtures in a single galvanized steel structure. The playground is vague, uncertain and elastic to accommodate the manifold versions of the future in a place like this.
_
