West Panthapath, Dhaka, Bangladesh/ 2022

Project Type: Interior
Year Designed: 2022
Location: West Panthapath, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Site Area: 3800 sft
Lead Architect: Shafique Rahman
Team Members: Niaz Morshed, Shanila Saifullah, Anannya Rahman, Mashkura Chowdhury
3D Visualizer: Rakib Patwary
Graffiti Artist: Sharmin Shormi, M.A. Akbor, Shahzim Hossain Riaz, Humayun Ahmed, Al Imran Sojol, Fazar, Sohag SG
Photographer: Junaid Hasan Pranto

Concept:

Access and Inclusion “Creative Kids”

The obvious lack of open spaces necessary for healthy social development in children led Yahia Md Amin, Psychologist, to create an indoor playground ‘Creative Kids’. The chosen location is a compact office floor of about 3800 sq.ft. located in a commercial building in Panthapath, a vibrant urban Centre in Dhaka. Panthapath is a mixed-use district surrounded by major residential areas containing half of its required open space for dwellers. A new typology offering intellectual and cognitive development in children is designed as a refurbished floor space. A commercial office has been adopted and reused as an indoor playground that focused on inclusivity and grows a community from social interaction in this context.  

The user group is children aged three to nine years, accompanied by adult guardians of any age. The design concept of creative kids is embedded into the research on children's psychological, social, and behavioral appearance. A set of activities have been designed as a series of stories, which offer the children to recreate their own narratives. The activity spaces provide an intriguing playing environment that will aid in the development of children's creative and intellectual abilities. The design derived from the notion to create an accessible and friendly space for children and a center for interaction with their community.

The design includes many interactive spaces with a friendly scale on multiple levels to gather and interact with the kids playing around irrespective of their age, gender, or classification. Different zones tell many different stories accommodated in a carved layout that allow access to differently-abled children to most of the activity areas. Services like Lockers, accessible toilets, and learning resources are textured with graffiti that also promotes learning from the whole world and is accessible inclusively.  For example, like many activity spaces, there is a double-decker minibus that allows 9 kids together to meet and learn socialization by interacting on an intimate scale.

Facilities for visitors like a traditional café are placed thoughtfully in a central location for allowing personnel to watch over the activity of their kids and to keep an eye on the entire area. Accessibility of the kid’s zone allows guardians to stay around and assist the children to develop many cognitive skills, while also interacting with the people of their community. The spatial connectivity of Creative Kids is well interacted and connected to different zones fluidly emerged to one another.

All activity spaces have been designed with local resources and resonate the cultural learning for the children. The whole play zone has been built with a thematic narrative and adopts a rich and bold color combination to create a vibrant and playful space. The built environment allows sufficient daylight and vista toward the city offering minimized energy consumption during the day. There are transformations and revolutions harmoniously designed in hues, demonstrating a high degree of completeness and consistency in the design and spatial storytelling.

While entering into creative kids a child will have a spectrum of unlimited possibilities that are extended throughout the floor plan. Children and their community perform here together to build a socially sustainable community. The embedded activity spaces ensure safety and inclusivity to grow and learn together.