Pegasus Trail is a new milestone in the typology of urban public interventions made by 100architects in the Public Realm. In this occasion, the neighborhood-scale intervention landed in the ever-growing city of Chongqing, the 3rd largest city of China and one of the Chinese megacities with greatest growth rates in the past decade.
This project intends to be a new typology of public space, “an urban toy for the city”. Following the studio’s belief that “Play is not only for kids”, 100architects have designed an urban playscape for the city, and for all its citizens, regardless of their age. A playscape that acts as an urban attractor, merged with the cityscape, blurring the boundaries between the play area and the surrounding cityscape, and presenting itself open and accessible for everyone.
The design of this multifunctional playscape, and hence its name Pegasus, is inspired by equestrian sports, in which the horse is the central feature of disciplines such as “Dressage” and “Show Jumping”.
The mythical winged horse leaves a magical yellow trace behind, meandering accurately around circular mini-plazas that serve as platforms for leisure and social interactions, turning the playscape into a multifunctional public space to be enjoyed by kids & adults alike.
Like the equestrian sports, the design of Pegasus Trail is based on a challenging course of obstacles that users need to overcome successfully, turning the playscape into a “Play Route”. It has been designed as a playful course of challenging activities along the path of the yellow ribbon, which helps developing and challenging the physical abilities and cognitive skills of those who dare to try.
All the playful components of the Play Route have been carefully studied and designed to create a sequential circuit of events, composed of challenging activities to be executed one after the other in a linear way.
Therefore, the Play Route has been split into different sections with different complexities for different groups of children's ages. This way, we have an easier level of complexity in playful components for kids from 3 to 6 years old at the horse’s tail, and it gradually increases while getting closer to the horse’s head, presenting bigger challenges for kids from 6 to 14 years old.
The ribbon meanders around 3 circular mini-plazas hosting different typologies of urban furniture for resting. While the ribbon represents the play and the action for kids, the circular plazas represent the rest and the calm spaces for parents and adults.
In order to make the ribbon very eye-catching and stand out from its surrounding background, it was done in a bright and intense yellow color, an energetic color that quickly grabs the attention of passersby, and can evoke a sense of happiness, vitality and optimism.
The floor, solved with EPDM to absorb impacts while playing, renders a wide range of patterns, graphics and interactive games which connect the different spaces and activities on the ribbon.
The night effect of the project enhances the meandering profile of the ribbon with LED warm lightboxes embedded in both borders of the ribbon, while other LED lightboxes embedded in the floor highlight as well the perimeter of the circular plazas.
