MĂ WAY

Ma Way is another twist in 100architects' recurring horse series for Dongyuan, following Horse Box, Horse Land, Sea Horse, and Pegasus Trail. After four successful projects exploring different ways of playing around the horse IP, the client came back for a fifth. This time, for the public realm of a newly built residential development in Hangzhou, the response was calligraphic: a playscape driven by the actual strokes of the Chinese character Ma, meaning horse. To be visible, recognizable, and readable from all the surrounding residential towers, the team created a huge character in eye-catching aquamarine green and turned it into a playscape. The calligraphic strokes, once geometricized, proved ideal for a playful path of entertaining activities filled with challenging obstacles and fun features that encourage social interaction. The negative space around the character complements the play route with pocket plazas for leisure, sunken seating, shaded areas for children and adults, sports zones for teenagers, and floor games for younger children, converting the space into a multifunctional, multi-generational square. Taking advantage of one detached stroke, the team designed a vertical play wall that looks like a straight line from above but becomes a challenging climbing, sliding, crawling, and vertical play element at eye level. Ma Way is developed as a play route from end to end, with graded difficulty for different age groups, and the strokes on the floor set the path along which children play and adults gather or rest, unifying the whole scheme in a single colorful line.