Ifat Finkelman & Deborah Pinto Fdeda

In response to the question How will we live together? this playscape is testing equilibrium—a state of balance between actions and forces, between human and nature, between human and human — through acts of communication and collaboration. This project seeks to produce a new reference plane raised above the existing ground to a new ground zero. A simple structure, which gives the concept of a chair a unique interpretation, is placed in a selected node. It is based on a new standard, not the industry standard of a seat at a height of 45 centimeters, which uses the ground of the built environment as reference point, but rather the 350 centimeters height that refer to landscape (elevation line -313.9). The act of sitting takes place within the new datum of the adjacent canopies. Research has already shown that beneath every forest and wood there is a complex underground web of roots, fungi, and bacteria that connects trees and plants to one another. This subterranean social network, which is nearly 500 million years old, has become known as the ‘wood wide web’. With respect to this underground network, the program of the playground is defined by experiencing the surroundings from a new point of view combining both humans and trees, and from the collective effort of getting back to a new equilibrium.