Spiire and BiGfiSh have joined forces to create Beneath the Sea: At Tumbalong Lights – one of four sensory rich play installations at this year’s Vivid Sydney festival.
A first of its kind, Beneath the Sea provided an inclusive play space for children with sensory processing challenges or those on the Autism spectrum to be able to experience the sensations and discoveries of being underwater.
Attracting over 50,000 visitors between May and June, Vivid Sydney wanted to create spaces at this year’s event that were accessible to everyone.
And with over 230,000 children in Australian affected by Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), the challenge for Beneath the Sea was to capture the calm, immersive feeling of diving beneath the sea and develop a suite of sensory and tactile play experiences and visualisations.
Leading Australian design consultancy Spiire worked with Vivid’s access and inclusion partner Cushman and Wakefield, in collaboration with specialist industrial designers BiGfiSh and Katie Greig, an ASD Consultant.
This collaboration produced a mesmerising installation that creates the illusion of a sea floor complete with soft flowing currents, bubbles, sea grass and sea life.
A truly unique experience, Tumbalong Lights recently received the National Design Award for Playground Innovation.
Spiire’s work to design with inclusion is part of a bigger mission to ensure design accommodates a more diverse range of people and better considers the wellbeing of all Australians.
Matt York, Principal, Strategy and Design, describes Spiire’s growth and diversification strategy as being focussed clearly on inclusion both from a cultural and design perspective.
"How we design should reflect the changing values and needs of our people and our cities," he said.
"For Vivid, our objective was to reconsider the idea of inclusion through the lens of Autism whereby social interaction, communication and repetitive behaviour, combined with sensory processing issues, present challenges during play."
"Vivid Sydney has been our pride and joy for the last year," he said.
"We really wanted to bring together the idea of Vivid and Sydney Harbour to create the immersive nature of being able to swim, the beautiful feeling, lights and tones that come from being in and under the water."
"There’s no winner, there’s no first place, it’s all about pre-arrival and discovery. It’s was a pretty emotional couple of days leading up to it being road tested but the reactions were gorgeous and so real – a wonderful achievement for all."
Behavioural specialist Katie Greig, who worked closely with Spiire and BiGfiSh to develop the playscape based on ASD management principles, was upbeat about the experience.
"It’s great to see others with such passion creating opportunities for kids to access events like Vivid," she said.
"The kids really responded positively. It’s remarkable."
Spiire plans to use this experience to create people-oriented design solutions in collaboration with public, private and not-for-profit clients and help to advise, design and deliver to support our growing cities.
The intent of Spiire is a simple one; it involves working with clients and the community to produce the best possible outcomes to ensure that their designs will be accessible to the wider community in the future.
Spiire is one of Australia’s largest privately-owned design consultancies with six locations in Victoria, NSW and the ACT.
The company specialises in planning, surveying, engineering and landscape architecture services for the land development market and recently added visual media and urban design capabilities to their growing portfolio.
In April 2018, Spiire opened a new office in Central Canberra to help expand their vision and support their multidisciplinary approach.
To find out more about Spiire’s upcoming design and development projects, head to the website.
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