How to design a caring neighbourhood incorporating children’s play and aspiration.

With a diminishing amount of safe opportunities for play and informal recreation outside the home, children are disappearing from the urban scene. In the past, alleyways were adapted for adventures and pavements were for play. Today, most spaces where children grow, play and learn are, at best, designed for children by adults; at worst, are spaces left over from the adult world. As play diminishes, so does community spirit.

This project addresses the decline in play spaces. It is inspired by the ‘blanket fort’, and proposes that architects work with the community – especially children – to co-create an integrated and caring neighbourhood. The test ground for this experiment is Webster Triangle: a neglected neighbourhood of terraced housing in Liverpool. The creative and imaginative mindset of a child has been adopted to craft an architectural language of social integration. Community participation becomes the basis of the project’s construction strategy. Streets are pedestrianised, a community centre is built, and terraced houses are retrofitted to accommodate the needs of residents and cultivate stronger relationships. Acknowledging the child as the foundation to regeneration, the project hopes to restore a vibrant community in one of Liverpool’s most unwelcoming estates.