Iona Presentation College’s Junior School playscape was recognised recently as an award-winning landscape architecture project.

The playscape won the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects (AILA) WA Chapter’s Landscape Award for Health and Education Landscape, as well as the People’s Choice Award at the 2020 AILA WA awards recently.

The playscape provides opportunities for children to play, climb, swing, hang, create, problem solve and have fun. Natural stone slab steppers, polished concrete slides, concrete soak well steppers, timber logs and timber forts have been used to create a variety of surfaces for the children to negotiate and enjoy.

“We are thrilled with the exceptional recognition the playscape has received and congratulate Four Landscape Studio for helping us create such a welcoming play space for our students,” said Anne Pitos, Principal at Iona Presentation College.

“The project brief was to bridge the divide between the classrooms and playground, creating external teaching and learning spaces and ultimately, an inspiring outdoor classroom,” she said.

“We wanted to utilise the inspiring topography of the site to create a play space that would challenge our students, while developing their physical and mental abilities.”

During the awards, the playscape was described as a project that delivers educational learning spaces that are at the same time playful, engaging, perfectly scaled for young children and immaculately detailed.

The judges were impressed with the design’s layering of functionality required to transition through the space, and between levels with the reinvention of how a school curriculum can be delivered. Also noted was the attention to detail and the variety of the materials used to create tactile and textured spaces.

Share this article.