The brief for this project from Falkirk Council was to design an inclusive play space for children aged 1-10 years that integrated with the existing mature park and showed individual character like no other play area in Falkirk.
Pulling on inspiration from the history of the park and local landmarks, a bespoke Robinia Wood pirate ship was designed to be the centre piece of the play area providing a theme that children can relate to and a unique identity for the play area.
The ship structure featured a name plaque ‘Newsboy’, which was the first ship in the millionaire Robert Dollar’s shipping fleet, who later gifted Dollar Park to the town of Falkirk. At the bow of the ship, a sculpture of a lion looks out over the play area, echoing the lion statues located at the entrance to the park and a Scotland flag flies proud on the mast!
‘Funding from our core parks development programme has created an opportunity to radically enhance or redesign playparks within several of our key parks.
The philosophy for play enhancement within our core parks is to provide sustainable unique & meaningful playspaces.
Our design brief for Dollar Park invited submissions to be sympathetic to the parkland character & identify with the historical provenance of this gifted park.
Jupiter Play & Leisure have successfully married our aspirations for the playpark by utilising focal play elements from their FHS Holtztechnik Robinia wood range and, in doing so, helped create an area with an organic feel which enhances the sense of space in this unique park.’
Mike Joyce
Land Services, Falkirk Council
This is the first site in Scotland to predominantly feature the handcrafted Robinia Wood play equipment from FHS Holtztechnik, which combined with play-chip surfacing and glacial boulders is ideal for the natural, historic environment of Dollar Park.
Dollar Park play area was officially opened on the 2nd of May 2010, and has proved to be a popular addition to the wide variety of play areas on offer in the Falkirk area.
