Pod for Happiness

Project Name: Pod for Happiness
Authors: Craft Narrative

CITATION

The act of playing under and around a tree is a primordial instinct – a response to the endless delights of nature and shelter. While formal practice of architecture deals with the design and making of buildings, this project establishes its role in being generative of a new potential, resisting the obvious typological responses.

The Pod for Happiness celebrates a tree. In doing so, it creates a wonderful set of possibilities for frolic and activity. The otherwise disciplined plinth is deconstructed to account for a ramp, a staircase, a bridge, a cave and a board, amongst other things that a child’s imagination may allow! The tree becomes an extension of the structure, and the structure becomes an extension of the tree!

By using space to modify the way a child may engage with the tree, the design prompts a natural and spontaneous response. The choice of material, seemingly obvious, is a deliberate attempt to assimilate the structure into the landscape. The constantly changing section takes advantage of all opportunities afforded by this organically changing space.

A simple venture to articulate a place within the shade takes a new dimension through a constrained and yet radical rethinking of a typology. The resultant space celebrates the tree, the ground and the indiscipline inherent in the patterns of play, generating a delightful architecture and thereby outlining the latent ingenuity of the design process in finding opportunities where none may seem present, and therefore, the Pod for Happiness by Craft Narrative is awarded a Citation in The Merit List.