Movement field Römer Street Würzburg

As part of the federal-state programme "The Socially Integrative City", several measures were carried out in the Würzburg district of Heuchelhof, a high-rise housing estate from the 1970s. An existing underground car park contained a playground in need of renewal, which was to be conceptually redesigned during the refurbishment. The underground car park (excess demand!) was empty and in need of refurbishment. Instead of redevelopment, the decision was made to demolish the underground parking. The pit of the demolished underground car park was filled with the company's own building rubble. The movement area was modelled out of the rubble.

In 2013, the playground was awarded the German SPIELRAUM prize.

Information on the playground
The playground in Römer Straße, which dates back to the 1970s, was in need of renovation after almost 30 years and was no longer up to date. A particular complication was the fact that the playground was built on top of an underground car park, which in the meantime was also in need of renovation and unused.
The non-use of the underground car park is related to the urban development of the Heuchelhof H1 district. Planned in the 1970s, a housing estate of high-rise buildings was built here. In 1980, however, high-rise construction was discontinued or, in some cases, fewer storeys were built. The surplus of underground parking spaces thus dates from the early days, when a higher number of apartments was expected.
From the very beginning of planning, it was clear that it would not make sense to expensively renovate an underground garage that was not needed. Therefore, the idea arose to demolish the underground car park and thus create completely new framework conditions for the design of the areas.

Play and design concept
As a basic idea, an attractive urban space with a high quality of stay and communication, as well as movement potential for everyone should be created. The aim was not simply to create a children's playground, but to create a platform for an unusual range of movement, the movement field. In the preliminary planning for the movement field the social department of the city, the local schools, kindergartens, the youth center, clubs, associations as well as the health care were included.
The focus of the movement field is climbing, balancing and hopping. The planners were inspired by high ropes courses and the sports of bouldering and parkour for the play equipment, some of which was specially designed for the movement field. A special feature of the movement field is that it can be used by all age groups. The climbing walls have different levels of difficulty and leave room for play interpretations. Eyes embedded in the walls can be used as slackline attachments. The high ropes course, developed in cooperation with Corocord, also offers different levels of difficulty with drop heights of up to 3.00m. For the planning and adherence to the safety interests the office Kaiser Juritza was supported by the playground expert Fritz flower (Deula Westphalia Lippe GmbH).
For the design of the play areas, the decision was made to create an undulating hilly landscape with a meandering valley running through it. The differences in altitude are visually supported by colour changes. The modelled landscape thus offers an independent play value. The subsoil was made of an all-weather synthetic surface, which allows drop heights of up to 3.00m in accordance with the object requirements. As a sculptural highlight, three climbing walls made of shotcrete push out of the ground along the course of the river. The hemisphere offers different degrees of difficulty due to its curved shape and can be connected to the long bouldering wall by a slackline. The mushroom-shaped overhang is mainly for experienced climbers and can only be overcome after some training. The curved cheese wall with its holes and the ascending narrow grade is especially challenging for smaller children and forms a secluded area. The basic themes are supported by other playground equipment, such as a belt jumping belt, mikado woods, balance beam and bridge, bouncy mushrooms, rotating beam and turntable.
The sunken play area is topped by two awnings. The problem of vandalism played a decisive role in the choice of materials. Steel and concrete should offer as little attack surface as possible. In addition, young people from the district were recruited to actively help with the supervision of the exercise field in the future. The former outer walls of the underground car park were separated from the playing field by a boulder wall. The graffiti artist Dominik Hofmann supported the planners in the colour design of the concrete walls. One of the sprayed concrete walls was designed in a workshop with young people.

Planning and construction
The simple basic idea of converting an existing underground garage into a cross-generational movement field required extensive planning and coordination, as it was a connecting building between two large garages in use. These, in turn, were located directly under the only access roads to the site, so could only be accessed by construction machinery and trucks to a limited extent. The modelling of the hillside was largely carried out using the demolition material, which was crushed on site. The surface water of the movement area can seep away on the fall protection surface, for safety there are still emergency overflows into the canal. The shotcrete walls constructed by Schmück, as well as the arrangement and placement of all foundations, proved to be a particular challenge. Due to the partially low overlap to the base plate, all foundations had to be arranged exactly in the modelling, as well as planned precisely in terms of height and position in advance. A correct overlapping of the drop areas also had to be maintained at all times. Both a 3-D model and a working model were used as planning and implementation aids.