Penfold - a playhouse for imagination

ll children have an unencumbered view of the world, who, given the opportunity to express themselves, can act as a catalyst to highly innovative and imaginative concepts.

Together we developed ideas around a den that was inaccessible to adults but had a crow’s nest, referencing their favourite cartoon Danger Mouse’ in which the reluctant sidekick, Penfold, is a timid, bespectacled hamster. Penfold’s codename ‘Jigsaw’ gave license to develop an entirely sustainable geometric timber frame that was elemental and simply looked like the way it was built.

The structure needed to be prefabricated in pieces and carried through the house via domestic scaled doors. When assembled the triangular Douglas fir frames combined to make a truncated pyramidal form. The Siberian Larch slatted cladding has a stainless-steel cable lattice to encourage climbing plants over the volume and ultimately create the sense of a tree that never was.

The unusual form and abstract scale of the structure provides a platform for imaginative play and permissive exploration, whereby at any point it can simultaneously be reminiscent of limitless possibilities of dramatic inquiry, such as a hollowed-out tree trunk, a spaceship, or a castle turret.

Due to its perhaps unusual height and form for a rear garden, planning permission was sought and achieved with the only condition being that the structure would need to be removed when the property was sold. Adults are somewhat prevented from accessing the interior by a low portal where one must stoop under and crawl into the structure.