Free areas for movement dreams/spaces for the little ones of Cologne
By Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Siegfried Knoll, knoll.neues.gruen.gmbh
It is difficult for the little children in the city. Many areas of the city, including the street, have vanished as a place to play. Despite efforts to create new areas for play, child-friendly living spaces (spaces for play and movement) are increasingly hard to find. The policy of a children-friendly city has to include the special goal to create these in its urban development.
In the KiTa Rio, children understand the world and make it their own, but also find their own retreats. Consciously experiencing and learning different speeds of movement is a prerequisite for a child’s development. In bad weather, children should be allowed to remain outside, where they can experience natural events like rain, wind and snow not from behind windows and doors, but directly and in a natural way.
The outdoor facilities are, in the original sense of the word, planned as a kindergarten, a garden for children, with practical possibilities to experience plants. It is a garden offering contact with nature in its many different forms, which is one of the elementary fundamental experiences of animal and plant growth and sensitivity towards it.
As many different materials as possible and a modelled terrain, with play areas at different levels, are offered by this renovated facility.
Dialogue
After intensive preliminary talks between the landscape architecture firm knoll.neues.gruen.gmbh and the day centre management, the following goals have been discussed: an existing garden area and open space will be combined and redesigned to create a little paradise for children. The aim is to achieve a child-friendly space with recreational areas that are in contact with nature and create a space for movement – for running, romping, climbing and sliding. Everything that motivates children to move has been planned - a track around the sandpit and terrace. A swing, possibly a net swing for all children as a shared swing experience.
Combined play equipment with a tree house, climbing wall, rope bridge, rising slope and a wide stainless steel slide.
Contact to nature will be made possible by the building site on the earth mound and in the butterfly paradise with willows and butterfly bushes (buddleia) as well as a mysterious barefoot path.
At the centre of the terrace remains the cabin as the large sand area with mud platform and play animals. Under the cover of two large parasols, many play functions are possible for the little ones in the sand and on the surface in almost all weather.
In the diagonally designed facility, the kindergarten with raised herb and vegetable plots as well as a new pergola for the existing wisteria climbing plant becomes a green nursery and classroom.
With its stage and tiered seating, the new green house on the site of the existing hut can be used for forms of play such as dance and theatre. Protection will be provided by a long painting wall along the retaining wall.
The aim of the facility as a whole is to create outdoor spaces, which motivate movement and provide a garden for all the senses.
The commitment of everyone
The commitment of knoll.neues.gruen.gmbh is obvious. Siegfried Knoll is a landscape architect, the owner of a well-regarded agency close to Stuttgart and holds a professorship at the Nürtingen-Geislingen University. The reason for his voluntary commitment in Ehrenfeld is his grandchild, who visits the establishment in Platenstraße. “We want as much green and colour as possible alongside optimally designed outdoor and play areas”, says Siegfried Knoll.
But it is not only the landscape architect, who is offering his services for free. The project can only become reality if everyone makes a contribution. With diggers, shovels, spades and wheelbarrows, some parents have created deep furrows and craters in the soil.
Only the larger trees remain standing. Even the children are joining in. “This is very important, because ultimately it is their garden, in which they will spend as much time as possible”, explains Siegfried Knoll. “But for me too, this is also a pilot project, which will provide me with a lot of experience in working together with parents”, continues Mr. Knoll. The involvement of parents in such work is becoming ever more important, because the municipalities have less and less money to spend, the landscape architect emphasises.
Bettina Beltz from the board of trustees of the “Rio” day care centre adds: “Since the new legal regulations in the field of early childhood education and care have come into effect, free trustees of day care centres are increasingly reliant on voluntary cooperation and sponsors if they are to ensure that their establishments continue to comply with the requirements. There are almost no public funds any longer available for necessary renovation work. The association has to itself provide € 20,000 for play equipment, gravel, sand and paving stones as well as plants, which is financed from reserves, membership fees and donations”.
Success proves the value of such commitment. Heribert Rösgen’s report in the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger bore the following headline: Parents create paradise in backyard.
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