"A playground where nature is reassembled for children"

It becomes a place where children engage in spontaneous play and
community relationships are restored within a landscape of reclaimed earth.

On the rooftop ridge of Changsin-dong, where one can meet Seoul’s clear breeze and wide sky, lies a site with one of the best views of the city center. Yet, due to its steep roads and dense residential fabric, it has remained a place rarely visited by outsiders, mostly limited to local residents. Once designated as part of a redevelopment “New Town” district, the area has since been released from that plan and is now used as a small children’s park, community garden, and parking lot. In 2015, the Seoul Metropolitan Government selected this area as the Changsin-Sungin Urban Regeneration Pilot District. As part of the regeneration project, the design competition sought to create an “eco-friendly, nature-based children’s playground” where children could play freely and safely.

Sanmaru Playground maximizes the use of the natural terrain and reflects the unique character of the surrounding community. The project restores the cut slopes and vanished ridges by replacing them with earth, extending the continuity of the landscape, and opening generous grounds for play. Traditional playgrounds tend to objectify children; here, the playground is reimagined as a place of creation and social life—where children grow emotionally through contact with nature and invent their own play, not through equipment but through earth itself.