At the heart of Greenwich, you will find historic sailing ship Cutty Sark, the National Maritime Museum, the Queen’s House, and the Royal Observatory all within walking distance from each other. Together, these four amazing, renowned attractions make up Royal Museums Greenwich.
With play, education, and inclusivity at the very heart of the Museum’s culture, the aim of a new outdoor play experience was to further increase the offer and create a destination for families that will not only be a highlight of their first visit, but also work as a major draw to return to the Museum time and time again.
You can see this begin to come to life with the initial site plan, sketched by the design team.
With more work, this then grew into visualisations of some of the key elements.
With inclusivity at the centre of the Museum’s ethos, they challenged us to push new boundaries.
To achieve this, the first six months of working on the project was all about listening, learning, and understanding the needs of an amazingly diverse audience through a programme of stakeholder engagement. There were more than 100 hours of consultation with over 200 individual stakeholders, from local SEND schools and groups, to help design the play they had always dreamed of being able to enjoy.
This process touched every part of the design on the micro and macro scale, from wide design themes, such as number, characteristics, and location of access points to site, right down to the smallest finishing touches. We baked their thinking into the fabric of the playground from the get-go, making the SEN features coherent and part of the narrative of the play, rather than adding it as a second thought.
The finished project is our most inclusive adventure play build to date, with 85% of the finished play accessible to wheelchair users and even more to those with additional needs.
You can see how it began to come to life through our CGI images
