Paris Belleville: Playground (2008-2018)

Client: City of Paris – DEVE / Clément Willemin – base as contractor + TERRASOL BET for geotechnics + Luc Mas Paris 20 / 1,1 M€ / 1000 m² / 2008

In 2004, the City of Paris requested a renovation of the playground of the Belleville playground in the 20th district. It is a great opportunity for us to enrich ourselves with a new field of construction, to confront an exciting subject, and to test out a new approach on playgrounds. Our intuition is that risk is to be taken as it is a great motor for child development, especially with a wooden landscape as the modus operandi. It’s a point the citizens of the district agree on; educational workshops set up by the town hall revealed that it is something they wished to see. No accidents have been reported in 10 years, despite record numbers of use and wide popularity among children in the summer.

Workshops for children and adults (spoken, written and graphic expression) allowed us to know precisely the wishes of the concerned population and to identify the project’s goals. The fundamental notion of risk-taking that we relied on came out of those workshops. This construction remains to this day our most published project. After 10 years, victim of its success, the playground is currently being renovated.

In 2015, it was ranked on the American dad website fatherly.com among the ten best playgrounds in the world.