Urban Play was an interim use and early activation project curated by Charlotte Bagger Brandt and Bettina Lam in collaboration with Køge Kyst. The idea was to use temporary artistic interventions to enable the community of Køge to reimagine the city’s industrial waterfront. The concept of interim use has now been thoroughly integrated in the culture of city planning and design but the concept was first introduced to me in Peter Arlt’s formative essay “Urban planning and Interim use” in the book Temporary Urban Spaces (edited  by Florian Haydn and Robert Temel, 39-46. Basel: Birkhäuser, 2006)

The curators assembled an incredible team of artists and designers from around the globe who created pieces ranging from mobile kitchens, to giant swings, to floating saunas...all created from material reused or repurposed from the industrial waterfront.

I visited the site in 2012 and developed an idea to reuse the material from an on-site existing log transport and sand quarry. Returning with friend and visual artist Tim Hyde in 2013, we spent 2 weeks on site with the team of artists and fabricators to create the work. Playscape of Wood and Sand utilized 100s of logs from the industrial logging operation and tons and sand to create a dynamic landscape that invited exploration and play.

Over the course of the exhibition the sand piles were eroded away and the logs exposed. The site was later modified with the addition of hammocks strung between the logs and a permanent version of the mobile kitchen and food producing gardens, which became a community gathering space. 

Køge Kyst continues to use interim uses as a way to engage the local community in shaping the vision for the future development, in particular the plan for design and programming of the public realm and open spaces to be created in the new waterfront neighborhood.

Collaborators: Matthew Passmore, Blaine Merker (Rebar) Charlotte Bagger Brandt: Raaderum, Bettina Lamm: University of Copenhagen

Photos by :John Bela, Køge Kyst and the many artists that participated in Urban Play.