The Adult Playground

The Adult Playground is een reeks van banken om ouders die met hun kinderen meegaan naar het speelplein, te stimuleren om te bewegen. Elke bank activeert een speciale spiergroep en vereist enige kracht om te gaan zitten. De banken werden ontwikkeld in samenspraak met fysiotherapeuten als antwoord op de vraag: hoe kunnen we mensen bewustmaken van het belang van krachttraining na hun dertigste?

The Adult Playground is a series of benches that encourage parents to exercise when they accompany their children to the playground. Each bench activates a special muscle group, and a certain amount of strength is required to sit on the bench. The benches were developed in consultation with physiotherapists in response to the question: how can we make people aware of the importance of strength training after the age of 30? 

By requiring users to maintain their balance, the Bouncing Bench engages the heart, back, glutes and legs, promoting stability and coordination. The Squat Bench is designed to activate the hips, legs and glutes and challenges users to stand up from a low sitting position without using their hands. Placed at a height to be reached by climbing, the Climbing Bench targets the heart, arms, shoulders and back and stimulates upper-body strength and endurance. Combining the functions of a bench and a slide, the Sliding Bench activates the arms, shoulders and upper legs for a dynamic workout experience.

The jury on The Adult Playground:

Once you pass your 30s, you lose 10% of your muscle strength every decade. The Adult Playground refers to this in an ingenious, tongue-in-cheek manner. Creative alterations in the shape of the bench challenge adults, encourage us to play along, and give us a chance to work on our health in an egalitarian manner. There should be more such campaigns.

What does this award mean to you?

As a communications agency, we normally only participate in advertising awards. But this award transcends everything - it is a recognition that our ideas, in terms of their design and positive impact on society, can also convince other juries. It is quite an honour to win Belgium’s most important design award.

How did the idea for this project come about?

We, AKQA Brussels, designed these benches in response to the request of our client, Helan Health Insurance. The question was: how can we make people aware of the importance of strength training after the age of 30? From the age of 30, we lose 10% muscle mass every decade. This makes 30 a crucial age to start good habits and stop losing muscle mass. However, this is not easy because it is the age when many people also have children and don’t have the time to exercise.

How does it contribute to a better world?

With this project, we transformed the “enemy of exercise”, the lazy bench, into a workout tool. Although most of us know that exercise is necessary for our health, we choose activities that mainly focus on cardiovascular health. The importance of muscle training is often overlooked. By exercising your muscles, you improve the functioning of your whole body, with many physical benefits for older people. However, traditional health campaigns are often ineffective because people don’t like to be told what to do. Through behavioural design, we managed to get the message across and get our audience to start moving, without using any words.