We Made That creates Olympic legacy playground

This £123,000 play area was commissioned by The Legacy List and London Legacy Development Corporation in collaboration with Lee Valley Regional Park.

Wild Kingdom is located in Three Mills Green in Stratford, east London, and has been designed to encourage children to ‘create their own playgrounds from the natural surroundings.’

Fallen trees, nets and ropes are placed around the space for children to create frames and swings from; while it’s hoped dens can be built from items such as giant tree stumps, branches and hammocks. There is also a Maypole swing and trampoline.

We Made That won an Architecture Foundation competition in September last year.

Holly Lewis, We Made That partner, says, ‘We weren’t interested in building something and just leaving it there – we wanted to invite people in.’

She adds, ‘The site its quite cut off in a way. It’s near Stratford and Bromley- by-Bow, but there’s not a lot of passing trade, so in order to make it really successful we had to put our efforts into activating it.’

We Made That worked with contractors Free Play on the project, aiming to ‘involve young people in the space and give them a sense of ownership so that it’s a two-way thing’, says Lewis.

We Made That received £17,000 from The Legacy List and London Legacy Development Corporation to run free on-site workshops for children on the site, and the coming months will see a number of ‘engagement projects’ talking place in the play area, such as planting, in order to engage the community with the space.