The Calton Hill Play Shelter is a modular and demountable structure designed by Scottish practice O'DonnellBrown for the Collective contemporary art centre in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Located at the World Heritage Site of Calton Hill, the 25-square-metre shelter stands in a flagstoned courtyard outside the art venue, which is housed in a 19th-century observatory.
Calton Hill Play Shelter is located at the Collective art centre in Edinburgh
The observatory, which was designed in 1818 by William Playfair to evoke a Greek temple, had previously stood empty until its transformation into an arts centre by Collective Architecture in 2018.
Glasgow-based O'DonnellBrown designed the play shelter to host a variety of activities in Collective's learning programme, including loose parts play and creative events for families. The shelter was designed to support the centre's outdoor learning programme
Calton Hill Play Centre is the latest in a series of shelters by the studio that is designed to promote outdoor learning during the coronavirus pandemic. The others include the Rainbow Pavilion and the Community Classroom in Glasgow.
"The play shelter demonstrates the adaptability of the design principles employed in our Community Classroom project applied to a highly sensitive location," said O'DonnellBrown co-founder Sam Brown.
The design nods to the classical architecture of existing buildings on the site
The core structural approach used in these previous outdoor learning projects...