White Loop

To avoid children climbing up the wrong way or cutting in line, the sliding and climbing routes were connected into a Möbius-strip form that integrates the slide and stairs.

It is designed for children aged 3 to 5, with a maximum height of 2 m.

3D printing was carried out by Yasutomo Matsuoka and Hiroyuki Tachikawa of DigitalArchi, with structural supervision by Mitsuhiro Kanada and Kazuma Goto of Arup. The printed parts are bonded with adhesive, and the tenons serve only for alignment. The upper and lower parts were joined at the workshop and test-assembled in anticipation of on-site installation.

The structure was divided into units for printing, and its width was kept small enough to fit on a truck.

The decision to use a resin 3D printer drew on the picture book Barbapapa, in which the characters build houses by wrapping resin around their bodies, and on the way 3D printers build forms by layering resin.

The arrangement of stairs, slide, and tunnel, the cross sections, and the proportions were studied repeatedly through sketches and models. The surface ribs were kept to the same number in every section so they run continuously, and a mockup was used to test the postures children take when crawling through.