Sail Boxes
Sail Boxes is a temporary play installation created for Boston PlayDay 2015 at The Lawn on D in Boston. The project combines a bamboo framework with stretched spandex fabric to create a series of spaces that visitors can move through, touch, and interpret for themselves.
The box-like frames establish a simple structural system, while fabric stretched across them creates an irregular sequence of passages and shaded nooks. Children can push against the elastic surfaces as they navigate the installation; visitors can also pause inside the smaller spaces. The contrast between rigid bamboo and yielding fabric makes the structure’s materials part of the play experience.
Sail Boxes has no prescribed route or activity. A passage can become a race, a hiding place, or the setting for an imagined gathering. This openness allows play to emerge from visitors’ choices rather than a fixed set of instructions. The repeated frames make the installation legible as a structure, while the shifting fabric gives each encounter a different spatial and tactile quality.
Project information
Location: The Lawn on D, Boston, Massachusetts
Event: Boston PlayDay
Year: 2015
Project type: Temporary interactive play installation
Materials: Bamboo, PVC connectors, and spandex fabric
Published in: Virginia Melnyk, “Where the Computer Ends and the Making Begins: Explorations in Spandex Fabric Structures,” Dialectic VI: Craft (2018)
Project coverage: World Landscape Architecture, Land8, and Arch2O