Georgia Bosson Studio was commissioned by Turner prize-winning design collective Assemble, to work on Fun House, an experimental play structure installed at the Nottingham Contemporary exhibition: The Place We Imagine, which opened on Friday 6th May 2022.

The exhibition concept is based on a drawing made by Lina Bo Bardi in 1962 of a fantastical playground outside of the Museum of Art Sao Paulo. The structures she drew are enormous and ridiculous, almost as if drawn from the eye of a child. The playground was never made, however, this new collaboration between Assemble, the Nottingham Contemporary and Schools of Tomorrow will bring to life an interpretation of the project, transforming the gallery into a space of play and reimagining how we access gallery spaces and make them open for all.

The studio was commissioned by Assemble to interpret a clay sculpture made by a group of school children during a workshop session. Our role was to bring the structure to life in cloth, creating something which could be climbed up and explored by children.

Core elements of the clay structure were developed by Jane Hall (Assemble) into a CAD drawing which converted the children’s imaginative piece into something which could be built. Georgia Bosson Studio was approached to solve how to create the soft, pillow-like outer surface which would cover the internal Valcromat structure.

This is a truly collaborative project and one which as a studio we have thoroughly enjoyed working on. From the initial concept sketch to the finished article the whole project was designed and delivered in just over a month, which certainly made for some interesting bank holiday weekends!

Large-scale architectural commissions are always a challenge but the wildly playful nature of this project and the final exhibition made it a joy to work on. Hopefully, it will spark joy in those who visit it too!

The huggable structure is made up of thirty individual pieces, with every tier needing a different set of pattern pieces in order to hug the internal structure and slowly shrink towards the top to create climbing rungs. Made with a ripstop canvas as the structure needs to be durable to withstand four months of climbing children (and bigger kids too!).

The Fun House structure is adorned with abstract shapes embroidered in house with a neon stitch pattern inspired by drawings made by artist Sian Watson each ‘blob’ contains a device containing 5-7 minutes of recorded sound which will play when the embroidered areas are climbed on or squished.

We used a total of 50 metres of fabric, 150 metres of webbing, 200 metres of velcro and over 800 metres of thread to create the finished climbing frame.

The exhibition is free and open to the public until 4th September 2022, you can read all about the show in this Guardian Article by Oliver Wainwright.