Crafting Finn St Park with Spacelab

Glascott were delighted to join Spacelab in the ‘Craft Your Park’ competition – an initiative to integrate natural play elements into Canberra parks with involvement from the local community.

The competition is an initiative of the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects (AILA) in collaboration with the ACT Government Transport Canberra and City Services Directorate (TCCS).

Spacelab’s design for Finn Street Park, O’Connor was one of three parks chosen for the competition. Spacelab engaged the Finn Street community to ‘co-design’ the park and ensure the new elements complement existing surrounds.

Glascott constructed the new elements including an outdoor learning area, rock seating and semicircular turf terraces that create a natural amphitheatre and a dry-river bed. A timber footbridge, log seating, climbing blocks, new pathways and turfed areas were also installed.

Natural objects like sticks and rocks, often removed from play spaces these days, were brought in so children have natural materials to create and build with. And, ‘living goal posts’ were created using trees and plants.

Not only did the local community help with planning, they also turned up to the Community Planting Day with adults and children getting their hands dirty installing trees and shrubs to create their new park.