by Francesca Young
Taking the idea of learning through play and running with it, the Milkshake Tree is a pop-up playground that rips up the rulebook. Part of the London Festival of Architecture, the Milkshake Tree was designed by pH+ Architects and centres around a tree and a glass prism that creates a kaleidoscope of colours and light. From the 23rd to the 30th of June, you can take the children to Greenwich to explore this multi-sensory garden, where they can play a giant xylophone as they pass and peer at the distorted reflections, just like the hall of mirrors at the funfair.
The brief was to design a playground for the London Centre for Children with Cerebral Palsy in North London, but before it moves to its permanent home, everyone can enjoy the pop-up, and there’s a Family Fun Day planned for Saturday 25th June.
You’ll find the Milkshake Tree outside NOW Gallery, a modern art space curated by West London mum Jemima Burrill, who is currently working on the People’s Brick Company, a project where you can make a brick, get your initials stamped on it and contribute to the building of a folly—a reminder of the area’s history as a brickfield site. Every weekend from 25th June to 4th August visitors can make their own bricks. The project ends with a mass firing of the bricks on the 17th of September and a picnic for all participating brick-makers in Peninsula Garden.
Until the 2nd of July, NOW Gallery is also hosting the Empathy Museum (3pm to 7pm Tuesday to Friday, midday to 7pm weekends), two shipping containers disguised as a shoe box and a library. The idea is that you borrow a pair of shoes and a head set, stepping into someone else’s shoes by listening to their story. The library—A Thousand and One Books—is full of books donated because they were someone’s favourite that they thought others would love too. The books can be taken out and passed along; see the collection here.
For more information, visit the NOW Gallery website.
Photo credit: Paul Raftery
