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Challenging Environments

Tassy Thompson: Cernach Community Playpark

Drumchapel, Glasgow

June 04

Cernach Housing Association is situated in Drumchapel, a peripheral estate in the north-west of Glasgow and provides a wide range of both new build and refurbished housing stock, for rent and shared ownership.

In 2000, the responses to Cernach Housing Association's annual tenant...

“The Cernach Community Play Park is exemplary. The project, small both in size and budget, manages to combine imagination with a remarkable attention to detail and usage. On first impression we are dealing here with a traditional playground - the swing, the slide, the revolving disk - but each separate element is carefully positioned in an imaginary landscape set against a sloping site. The consistent use of material provides a strong sense of unity and an ambiguous other-world character. The play equipment is designed and positioned to promote interaction not only between the children themselves but also their parents or carers: a stage set for play with subtle interface between
the performers and the audience.”

Eelco Hooftman 
Landscape Architect and Director of Gross Max, in a 2003 commissioned essay

Challenging Environments

Tassy Thompson: Cernach Community Playpark

Drumchapel, Glasgow

June 04

Cernach Housing Association is situated in Drumchapel, a peripheral estate in the north-west of Glasgow and provides a wide range of both new build and refurbished housing stock, for rent and shared ownership.

In 2000, the responses to Cernach Housing Association's annual tenant questionnaire highlighted a growing desire among local children for improvements to the built environment and for play provision. This led to five public sector funders contributing to a community playpark. The project was distinguished by having a comprehensive education and community outreach programme which involved all local schools, nurseries and Cernach's Tenants' Participation Group.

Artist Tassy Thompson worked with local people, the Tenants' Participation Group, Mike and Sue Thornley Architects and Chris Palmer Landscape Architects. Together they created a park that has exploited its awkward site to the full, is a well-resolved environment and answered accurately and intelligently the brief set by the children.

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