EUS+ Architects, creating space for the next generation, have been working with Save the Children's ‘Playground' campaign over the past few years. That campaign is a project to build a playscape through a co-creative participatory workshop with children to improve children's rights to play.In Korea, only about one in 10 children get together and play with their peers after school.What we need to do to solve this situation is build a playscape in the children's daily lives. But with the children! And it will also be important to secure play time through the cooperation of the school.

Yongma Elementary School, located in a small city near Seoul, is the 55th school to participate in the 'Playground' campaign.Yongma Elementary School has a typical school space structure in Korea, divided into flat school yard and vertical school buildings.While the school lacks outdoor facilities for children to use, the unique spatial feature of Yongma Elementary School is that trees along theschool boundaries distinguish between inside and outside the school.Also, the experience of playing with friends under this tree is a valuable asset for children in this school.The goal of this project is to create a three-dimensional space that crosses vertical and horizontal lines, and to lead to more abundant activities among the trees.

 The co-creative participatory workshop with the children consisted of 'Imagining play between trees', 'Making and connecting vertical playgrounds' and 'Building vertical playgrounds'.Materials such as post-it, lego, and straw were used to meet the goals of each workshop.Lego was the best material for creating, disassembling, and connecting to a friend's vertical space.To discuss the practical ways to build a vertical playscape, we worked on truss structures using straws and finished theworkshop by giving a group presentation on the truss structure in the schoolyard where the playscape will be built.The ideas delivered by children through this workshop were actively used for detailed play elements, methods of  building spaces, and metaphors.

 The main concept of design is ‘Playful Elevation’. We placed a vertical playscape around the schoolyard, facing the entrance of the main school building.We also projected the rhythms of the school facade’s columns to the playscape design, creating different levels to naturally connect the space.The triangular playscape that connects two trees in reverse triangle form is like a hill with soft ridges or a crouching elephant.We've been borrowing the little prince's fairy tale metaphors, hoping that the children's endless play imagination will be embedded in this playscape.The spaces that children imagined through co-creative participatory workshops, such as the space to stay, the space to go up and down, and the space to hide, live between these ‘Playful Elevation’.In 'Playful Elevation', which connects two trees, what stories and children's play activities can you see?