Goldsmiths / Arup live brief
Tides-sensor flood park
The Connection Between Water Ecology & Human Communities
We must address the shortcomings of our artificial landscape that contribute to the environmental emergency we face. It's crucial to raise awareness and take action to mitigate rising tides, involving current and future generations. London's floodplain projection shows the Thames' bank widening up to four miles, highlighting the impact of flooding on our lives.
Rendered by Luis Chihwei Ho (Climate Central, 2021)
We chose Cutty Sark as a site because the ship is expected to enter the water again in 2030, and it is a place where communities, tourists, and students meet.
According to the interviews with the communities around Cutty Sark, we found out that they emphasize the education of the young generation and mentioned that they would like to learn from their kids.
The Design:
The play park's unique design features a stepped base that will allow children to play around rising sea levels, with each level being 15 centimeters higher than the previous to ensure a clear separation between flooded and non-flooded areas.
As water is added to the park, some of the objects will become inaccessible, and when the water is at its highest level, only 20% of the park will be accessible. The project aims to demonstrate and intrigue the next generation that rising floods are getting closer to our land and houses, and bring education in the play park, learning the serious future through the act of play, and warn the parents through their children’s act of play.
Render by Jangwon KimWorkshop: Figuring children’s takeaways in a specific age range
Our team conducted workshops that focused on encouraging children's creativity through symbolic and narrative-based play.
We held these workshops at Pitzhanger Manor and Gallery as well as St. Peter's Primary School, where we gathered inspiration from children's drawings and ideas for how they would interact with a play area. We found that playhouses were the most engaging way for children to interact with the concept of flooding.
By nurturing their imagination and encouraging a narrative, playhouses offered a space for creative problem-solving while also educating children about the challenges that come with flooding, such as inaccessibility. Our proposal aims to inspire role and narrative-based play while also offering challenges to promote creative thinking. This project is aimed at raising awareness about climate change and taking steps to mitigate rising tides. We focus on caregivers and their children between the ages of 5 to 10 as the best time for education and takeaways.
Play house idea development:
We took inspiration from the children's drawings and concluded that narrative play to see how they decided to interact with the play area for our overall design.
Site:
The site for the project is an overgrown patch of inaccessible grass that will be underwater by 2030 due to the effects of global warming. The project's location overlooks the current bank of the Thames, which gives a sense of urgency when people are confronted with the issue of climate change.
The water level is controlled by sensors located at the Thames barrier which monitor the sea level and send the real-time height to the flooding system at the lower basin of the playground.
Sketch by Jinyong Gim
Future interaction with the ecology system :
The proposal also considers the ecology of the water, some surfaces of our proposal are made with similar grooves to encourage marine life prosperity and incorporate carbon-neutral materials and natural dyeing methods to support marine life prosperity and the natural environment. 
(living sea wall,2023) Render/Photoshopped by Luis Ho
Presentation at ARUP
