Design studio Snarkitecture has designed an expansive playground in the Great Hall of the National Building Museum in Washington DC, USA, the largest indoor installation ever at the institution.
Called simply The Playground, the installation features nine distinct play areas spread throughout the Italian Renaissance Revival-style Great Hall in the National Building Museum (NBM) and set on top of recycled flooring.
Snarkitecture said that the installations drew materials explicitly from the built environment and were arranged in ways that create unexpected opportunities for play.
"Snarkitecture has always been interested in the familiar made unfamiliar –environments that invite people to see and experience the world differently," said Snarkitecture co-founder Alex Mustonen.
"The Playground reimagines the familiar experience of a playground into something unexpected: an invitation for people of all ages to rediscover the joy, creativity, and wonder of open-ended play."
Centrally located is The Hill, a platform made with stepped birch plywood with slides and places to sit. NBM described this element as a "sculptural landscape with slides, tunnels, and places to gather".
Also rendered from birch is the Wavy Walls maze, which wraps around and interacts directly with the monumental columns at the centre of the hall, which are actually made of plaster-covered brick painted to look like the marble in Michelangelo's Santa Maria delgli Angeli church in Rome.
The installations were designed to be extremely interactive. A small climbing wall sits at one end and Snarckitecture included the Dig Pit, filled with natural cork.
An area with hammocks hanging from red-painted metal was designed to look like scaffolding, emphasising a desire to have children interact with industrial materials not usually used for play.
This follows the museum's mandate to "inspire curiosity about the world we design and build", which is most evident in the Adventure Yard, where wood, piping and metal are made available for play.
"Using real materials and tools, young builders are invited to imagine, construct, test ideas, and collaborate as they explore the fundamentals of design and making," said NBM.
Also included is an area for smaller children and an obstacle course that also resembles scaffolding.
Other recent playgrounds featured on Dezeen include a playscape in Gloucestershire, UK, made from the oak of a surrounding forest and a space-themed playscape in Belgium.
The photography is by Noah Kalina.
The Playground runs from 3 July to 30 August at the National Building Museum. For more global events, installations and talks in architecture and design, visit Dezeen Events Guide.