Interdisciplinary Design Competition

This past term we had an Interdisciplinary Design Competition that involved students of Interior Design and Industrial Design working on a solution for Adam Bienenstock's Natural Playgrounds. The problem was brought to the students by our professor Karen White and it involved finding a way to ease the transportation and set up of his natural playgrounds at temporary sites. The students worked in teams of 4 or 3, and our team members included Benjamin McLeish, Nicolas

Traquair, Masooma Naqvi, and Magda Czechowicz.

We called it “Popping Up Play” as it was inspired from the client's need to create a playground for temporary installations. This design features flat-pack structural units that quickly fold together to form hollow cubes of varying heights, an idea we took from collapsible plastic cartons. "An ingenious integral slot system allows the units to tightly interlink and create a rolling topography on top of which can be installed landscape, pathways and playground elements" (Karen White).

The wall assembly

It was a great experience and we all had a fantastic time, it was a very pleasant surprise to find that we won the competition and our idea was chosen from 25 awesome entries.