Playscape: Urban RE-Creation

Park, Recreation, and Playground Along Trinity River

Instructor: Marion Weiss & Michael Manfredi

Team: Tuo Chen, Jianan John Dai

Spring 2022

This project recreates the landscape aside Trinity River for urban recreation, park, and playground, to stimulate human interaction, physical community, and social engagement, and to make the case that childhood environments matter more than we think. To fight the scarcity of urban playgrounds and the dire lifestyle of our generation, we must create outdoor spaces that are for all ages, that provide “play affordance”, that are outside of the box, that are epic and memorable, and most importantly, that are fun.

While there is a lot of enthusiasm about professional sports in Dallas, civic participation in recreation is quite low. Part of this has to do with the lack of spaces and facilities. Compared to cities of similar populations and sizes, Dallas has fewer trails, and fewer sports fields, and has been spending less to create the infrastructure needed for civic recreational activities. The city is aware of this issue and has recently published the Park and Recreation Comprehensive Plan in 2016, trying to turn this around by creating more parks and amenities in the next decade. How can we ask the citizens to go to the park, if there’s no park to go to?