Dunraven School

• Brief for a dynamic playful landscape.
• Use of play and public parks expertise in a school setting.
• Inspiring playscape created around a series of undulating mounds.

Dunraven School is a primary and secondary school in the London Borough of Lambeth which converted to all through in 2012. As part of that work they needed to extend the existing school buildings and re-imagine the outside play and games spaces. Our brief was to create an interesting playful landscape for the children; they wanted something that would be dynamic and break the mould of standard playground design.

We were selected for the project because of our experience of landscape architecture for play schemes and public parks as well as for schools and we were able to draw on that understanding to meet the brief.

The design included areas for reception children as well as KS1 and KS22 with a garden and play and games spaces. The central feature of the design was a series of undulating mounds which add another dimension to the landscape. These were given different textures with surfaces such as artificial turf and rubber crumb to produce an area that would inspire the children’s own play.Around the mounds we installed the garden with ornamental planting and imaginative play equipment.