Text description provided by the architects
The children's playground of the Hyatt Regency Shenzhou Peninsula in Wanning, Hainan, is a nature-themed play landscape built for the China Overseas Hyatt resort on Shenzhou Peninsula, a coastal promontory celebrated for its mild climate, sheltered bays and soft white sand beaches. The peninsula's fishing harbor, where boats move between nets on the water, and its romantic maritime culture set the vacation tone for the whole island. The resort buildings adopt a natural architectural language in warm brown and beige tones, with broad double-pitched roofs and wood-imitating structures that establish a tropical holiday atmosphere. Working within that register, the design team has created a site-specific natural-landscape playground under the concept of a space of play and the play of space, fully exploiting the site's resources to give children a three-dimensional, multi-dimensional play experience rich in coastal resort character. The playground is divided into a dryland zone of 369 square meters and a water zone of 181 square meters, and abstract artistic play equipment has been layered over a natural, childlike palette so that the whole setting fuses with the seaside resort style. The water play area draws on local elements, weaving Li-ethnic rattan braiding techniques into structures inhabited by splashing water and coral forms. Synthesizing research on large, medium and small play facilities, the team organizes play around water slides, spray features and interactive water play, distributed flexibly so that children can move freely beneath water channels and through equipment, while covered walkways offer shade as well as circulation, and at night mist, spray and light compose an animated, artistic scene. The dryland playground reconstructs Hainan fishing baskets and hats, Li-ethnic rattan art and colorful coral forests through a whimsical design lens. Grounded in child-behavior psychology and educational theory, it programs zones for different ages that combine crawling, climbing, bouncing, peering and sitting, expanding children's physical and intellectual range and provoking curiosity. Fishing-basket trampolines, super fishing nets, coral lookout points and Li waist-basket equipment immerse children in a world of woven and coral imagery, while a parent-care zone ensures safety and supports family interaction. At night, spray mist and lighting transform the dryland zone into a real coral forest. Throughout the process, designers repeatedly visited the factory to control equipment form and function, printed 3D maquettes before model reviews and adjusted schemes to guarantee safe, joyful exploration that leaves warm childhood memories.