a place of
their own
neighbourhood and park design
december 2021
Clients
City of edmonton - trudy raadik
timeline
4 months
role
researcher and designer
collaborators
makda ghezehei, jiayi ma, amelia zaïane
PROJECT BRIEFThe purpose of this project is to assist and inform our client, the City of Edmonton (COE) Neighbourhoods and Planning Committee, in creating an inclusive park space in one of Edmonton's 2023 neighbourhood renewal projects. We focused on research that will assist the COE Planners with future park designs that will benefit the community of the Baturyn neighbourhood, as well as all users of the park. When designing play spaces, the lived experiences of young girls are routinely left out in design considerations for park and community gathering spaces. In one’s formative years, feeling excluded from communal spaces can be detrimental to the formation and sustainment of strong female relationships with peers, as well as their greater sense of belonging in the community. Thus our focus of this design, and the guidelines we formed alongside, are towards young women and teen girls.We designed a safe and authentic gathering space that fosters bravery and trustworthy interactions, empowering girls and women to set themselves up for success.
GUIDING QUESTION“how might we create a safe and authentic gathering space that fosters bravery and trustworthy interactions, empowering girls and women to set themselves up for success?”
OBJECTIVESFacilitate Community And Gathering
Encourage and promote the user’s opportunity to participate in community-building activities and conversations with those around them, and to create a space that allows for this connection
to be possible.Mature Ways To Play
This can happen through active engagement with the space. We want to encourage physical actions and activities that anyone at any age can participate in. This could include jumping, walking, climbing, or swinging.Security And Belonging
We aim to alleviate systematic hyper-awareness through environmental and spatial design. We can achieve this by enforcing security through increased sightlines, considering strategic shelter, increased visibility, access to transportation, and population density.
HOW DO WE ACHEIVE THIS
Through a non-place. The term was described by Marc Augé, a French Anthropologist:
“Non-place or nonplace is a neologism coined by the French anthropologist Marc Augé to refer to anthropological spaces of transience where human beings remain anonymous, and that do not hold enough significance to be regarded as “places” in their anthropological definition”
Through this definition, we intend our gathering space to exist as a non-place that allows users to:discourage stereotypesexperience open acceptance among usersexist without rationalization
finalized poster and proposed guidelines
