For anyone struggling with the ongoing horror of a bulky – and potentially underused – trampoline in their back garden, help is at hand. Playfolly is a multi-purpose playground, climbing frame, and all-round kid hangout, which will bring joy, colour and fun to your yard, on the smallest of footprints.
It’s the brainchild of Luke Pierson and it will be familiar to readers of Here. Pierson lives in Sergeant’s Cottage, which won our Best House Aotearoa award last year, and which features a prototype Playfolly in the front garden, opposite the beach at Worser Bay, Te Whanganui-a-Tara.
Pierson first conceived the idea when his oldest child – now in his late teens – was at primary school, and returned to the concept when his two younger children hit the same age a couple of years ago. He got in touch with industrial designer Clark Bardsley with the seed of an idea. “Three years ago I redrew the thing to be something I was moderately happy with,” he says, “and then of course Clark modified it and made it much better.”
The basic idea is a rocket- shaped tower, built from powdercoated aluminium and clad with macrocarpa battens. But it’s more complex than that: it’s designed with flexibility and customisation built in. The frame can be manufactured in any standard powdercoat colour, and while it’s made entirely in Wellington, it arrives flat-packed, allowing the user to choose window placements.
It’s designed to keep the kids interested. Once constructed, they can climb the ladder, or pop up through hatches on the inside. Then, you can add accessories to the base module, which connect via a custom adaptor. So far, these include a roof, basket-ball hoop, pulley and mast, but there are more ideas brewing. As Bardsley points out, a trampoline is used in one particular way, but this offers multiple possibilities. “One of the things we’ve heard from people is that kids change, so we need to keep evolving the design,” says Pierson. “It keeps it interesting.”
Bardsley has had one in his back garden for a couple of years, and Pierson’s had his at Worser Bay for a year. One of the early lessons came when they started thinking about accessories. While the base model was interesting for the kids, and a magnet when their friends came over, the addition of multiple different activities changed the usage. “They started to play with it a lot by themselves,” says Pierson.
Playfolly is designed to look good, as well as being solidly made. “The philosophy was to do the absolute best thing and then work back from there for manufacture, rather than compromise from the start,” says Pierson. It could have been done with steel, but they chose aluminium. You could do it in cedar, but macrocarpa smells better. It’s expressly intended for people interested in architecture and design. “It looks beautiful at night – it just glows,” says Pierson. “It’s something that will age well in the garden.”
Playfolly
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