The Calton Hill Play Shelter is a modular and demountable structure designed by Scottish practice O’DonnellBrown for the Center for Contemporary Collective Art in Edinburgh, Scotland.
The 25-square-meter sanctuary is located in the World Heritage Site of Calton Hill, on a flag-studded courtyard outside the Art Place, which is housed in a 19th-century observatory.
The observatory, designed by William Playfair in 1818 to evoke a Greek temple, had previously been empty until it was turned into an arts center by Collective Architects in 2018.
Glasgow-based O’DonnellBrown designed the Play Shelter to host a variety of activities in the group learning programme, including loose parts play and creative events for families.
Calton Hill Center is the latest in a series of shelters the studio has designed to promote outdoor learning during the coronavirus pandemic. Other groups include the Rainbow Pavilion and the Glasgow Community Study Hall.
“The Play Shelter demonstrates the adaptability of design principles used in the Community Classroom project applied to a highly sensitive site,” said O’DonnellBrown co-founder Sam Brown.
The basic structural approach used in these previous outdoor learning projects has been applied to the Calton Hill Play Shelter, which is designed to remain in place for a minimum of three years.
“The client was delighted to work with him to relate it to the historical context, and create a harmonious building addition that also follows the principles of the circular economy,” Brown added.
O’Donnell Brown of the City Observatory Classic painted corresponding to the proportions of the whitewashed wooden frame, which was created from poles secured with easily screwed-in nails.
The studio explained that “the rhythm and proportion of the surrounding classical architecture of the 19th century determined the spacing between the columns and the height of the ceiling.”
The polycarbonate roof covers the shelter and is slightly raised to create a gap at ground level.
Wooden planks fill in some of the gaps between the columns, while others are left open to provide a number of paths in and out of the space.
To conceal the steel Calton Hill Play Shelter feet, patio tiles were temporarily removed and repositioned to reduce the effect of the shelter.
The stone wall around the observatory’s perimeter hides the sanctuary from view to the outside, as well as protecting the open interior from strong winds on the site.
O’DonnellBrown is an architecture studio founded in Glasgow in 2013 by Jennifer O’Donnell and Brown.
The outdoor classroom prototype, first created in a community classroom, is now being manufactured by furniture and design company Spaceoasis.
Photographed by Ross Campbell.