Why did Mangrove create a playground at DDP?

[POP-UP] Gather Around! Mangrove Playground, Behind the Scenes of the Project

Gather Round! Mangrove Playground

Mangrove, the co-living brand, participated in the design festival ‘Seoul Design 2023’ hosted by the city of Seoul. We'll share the behind-the-scenes of how Mangrove interpreted the festival's theme, ‘Valuable Marriage,’ through its unique perspective.

We tell stories of living together.
Mangrove creates communities where diverse people can engage healthily and grow authentically through housing. We have always listened to the stories of people sharing the same space and living together. We believed that 'Valuable Cohabitation,' the theme presented at Seoul Design 2023, was a subject we were most confident in.

So, how can the sensation of 'living together' be expressed in an exhibition? There are endless ways. For instance, we could build a big house resembling Mangrove at the DDP Plaza where the Seoul Design 2023 event takes place, allowing people to freely come and go. However, even if we prepare a fabulous space that everyone would want to reside in, making it a shared experience is quite challenging. Usually, when visitors come to an exhibition, they share the experience individually or among friends they came with.

In contrast, in the co-living houses cultivated by Mangrove, casual encounters with strangers often occur. Residents might exchange light eye greetings with new neighbors or sweat it out during yoga sessions with people they met at social clubs. Through interactions with various people and accumulating diverse experiences, a community living together is formed. So what kind of experience should be designed to allow strangers to engage and interact together?

Let's Play Together!
We focused on 'play,' an emotion everyone can share regardless of age, gender, or nationality. The idea was to express diverse relationships formed while living together through playful equipment. Whether alone, with a partner, or in a group, we illustrated the variety of encounters one experiences throughout life accordingly.

And based on these illustrations, together with Studio COM, who designed Mangrove Dongdaemun, we created five kinds of playful equipment. Containing the message that various individuals create a community, the exhibition naturally took the title 'Gather! Mangrove Playground.'

This character, which decorated places throughout the playground, not only represents the five kinds of play equipment but also symbolizes the individuals gathering in the playground's community.

❶ Cozy Bouncing Spring Horse
As a play equipment representing solitude, we created a spring horse, commonly found in local playgrounds.

However, we placed these spring horses to face each other in threes. When playing alone, you can lift your head and enjoy conversing with those seated across from you. We hoped individuals could indirectly experience the loose connections of co-living, where you might lightly greet the neighbor next door, even while living alone.

❷ Tug of Harmony Balancer
We also prepared equipment for two or three people to enjoy in cooperation. It emphasizes close interaction, communicating as you synchronize your steps to balance.

❸ Teetering Team Seesaw Group Seesaw
A seesaw for teams of two allows pairs to meet and play with other teams, completing the play experience with friends.

❹ Wobbly Air Platform Air Bounce
This equipment plays the role of a plaza where the most people can gather. Every time one person steps on it, the entire air platform wobbles, symbolizing a community that transforms with each participant's unique personality.

We aimed to express a gathering of diverse, unique individuals with the colorful dots that filled the platform.

❺ Noisy Hill Slide
With a chance to view people filling the playground from a unique perspective while going up and down the slide, this equipment particularly drew attention when descending, serving as a highlight of the Mangrove Playground.

Ten Thousand Ways of Play
We discovered an interesting fact while observing visitors who came to the Mangrove Playground. Even while playing on the same equipment, the points where people felt fun differed greatly. Some laid quietly on the air platform to rest, while others rolled around and enjoyed it dynamically. Some laughed the most when capturing friends descending the slide on camera.

The exhibition presented more diverse scenes than we had imagined over the 10 days it ran. Among these were both anticipated and vastly different scenes from what we thought. The places people focused on and took pictures of varied, showcasing as many as ten thousand different interactions for each of nearly ten thousand visitors who found the playground.

For Mangrove, creating a place where diverse people live together, it was a moment of a thousand learnings. It was a valuable time to learn and envision what a Mangrove-like community life truly means.

For those who regret not visiting the Mangrove Playground, we've prepared a video capturing the vividness of that day. Check it out now!