Themed Liquorice Allsorts playground celebrating the site’s former heritage, the Darrell Lea Chocolate Factory

Landscape architects draw inspiration for play space innovation from many sources, including collaboration with the local community, the natural environment, physical characteristics of the site, and even the choice of materiality to be applied.

Playgrounds are often where communities come alive. They present a formidable design challenge to balance design appeal, functionality, and safety with long-term relevance.

Arcadia Landscape Architecture captured this in their concept for a bespoke playground that doubles as an artistic statement piece for a residential development in Sydney’s South. The concept is paying homage to the former Darrell Lea Chocolate Factory that once occupied the site.

This unique custom playground was then brought to life by Tilt Industrial Design.

Liquorice Allsorts is a site-specific playground featuring play elements that emulate the Darrell Lea candy. Designed to surprise and delight children and adults and create a path of play that lets them explore the play space.

Arcadia engaged Tilt to undertake a design study exploring the liquorice allsorts theme – this included 3D renders of the concept. Tilt also considered the unusual shape of the site when designing the equipment to ensure it was positioned efficiently.

Tilt was able to connect proprietary play elements to the custom-designed modular cubes – through clever design, the play structure provides clear paths of play in multiple directions, resulting in no wasted areas or dead ends.

Tilt paid particular attention to the interface between each play element, the standards and performance requirements, and high ‘play value’. The colour selection was also paramount to the design.

The result is a truly site-specific leisure area and artistic statement piece – providing a safe, engaging environment for children to play and parents to interact as well as a thoughtful narrative for the residential development.