{'Rapid Palace' Image by Visiondivision}
Children have the inherent knack for making something out of nothing. While waiting for dad or mom to finish up work at the office they'll find any random object and create a game out of it. My family has home videos of my youngest brother, who had a sack full of toys, but chose to spend hours playing with a plastic bag in the wind.
But this doesn't mean we can provide the kiddies with grander environments which engage imagination and creative play.
A grade school in Sweden, with a sea of asphalt as their playground and next to nothing budget, commissioned Swedish architectural firm Visiondivision to transform the schoolyard into something extraordinary, as the school already has a budget for asphalt maintenance they decided to use that as a main tool for the improvement of the yard.
Visiondivision produced a design for a so-called "Rapid Palace" by tearing up the asphalt according to a floorplan, and planting the exposed ground with a Swedish form of bamboo (a material famous for its strength, height, and rapid growth). The resulting sculpted bamboo forest produces a series of play areas, and smaller classrooms for outdoor teaching when the weather is nice. Below is the transformation of the space:
{Existing schoolyard | Image by Visiondivision}
{A pattern combined from plans of palaces from all over the world is created by tearing away parts of the existing asphalt | Image by Visiondivision}
{Fast growing Salix (Swedish bamboo) are planted in the new voids | Image by Visiondivision}
{As the kids start school again they will have a palace made from walls of Salix that already has reached half their length of four meters | Image by Visiondivision}
Related: On Asphault I