Can we have multispecies playgrounds? Cities are home to a huge variety of species, but while they share space, they do not share their lives. ‘Interspecies Play’ explores the idea of a playground in the public space for different species to have fun and interact with each other as much as they want to.

Urban wilds are already part of our society and engaging with them can be fun. We hope for our project to become one step in the movement towards an inclusive multi-species society, where more and more people enjoy interspecies play.

One of the play tools is a photo booth, designed for humans, birds and small mammals. The three booths are physically separated to respect each others boundaries but communicate digitally.

Whenever the sensors for bird’s and mammal’s booths detect a movement, a light in the human’s booth goes on. This is the indication for humans to run and get its picture taken. The printed out photo shows the human and the photographer who might be a pigeon, a singing bird, a bat, a mouse, a hedgehog or a leaf in one picture.

 

Further pictures captured by the booth

Another playground tool is the Floating suit. With this inflatable suit you let go of control and float freely in the pond, looking at the city from a duck’s perspective.

We imagined to float with ducks, so that they will swim around you. After getting comfortable on the water, we tried to make them come closer by offering food and toys, however, we forgot they are non-domesticated wild animals and there is no way to force them. The big floating suit was simply too intimidating.

Yet, this feeling of the ducks choosing freely not to float with us felt strangely powerful – almost as if we finally meet as equal beings. From the experiment and the feedback of the ducks, we learnt that it can be very powerful to leave the decision making to other species.

The first play tool was a water bird slide. Inspired by a video of ducklings sliding, we wished to do the same at Stadtpark.

Even though we already chose muted colors that blended in with the environment, it took much longer than expected -at least three months- before the animals around the pond got comfortable with it.

Visitors of the park tried did try to get the ducks to slide, but no one was successful. From this experiment we take with us that establishing a relationship and building trust with wild animals takes a long time.

This is a footage we took while testing out mirrors with different urban wilds. The pigeon seems to be surprised and scared by its own image.

While building the objects, we did several material testings. Big shiny objects were a no go for birds. Weaving with natural materials seems to be more accepted by wild animals.

For us, it was of uttermost importance to ask urban wilds for feedback. They were ruthlessly honest about our designs and this interaction taught us how multifaceted our relationships could be.

The adventure starts with the idea of a multispecies playground, a public space for different species to have fun and interact with each other as much as they want to. From the very beginning and in collaboration with Stadtpark Vienna, we started to sketch, build and experiment.