Railplay station outside of Hamburg

Issue 1: Spielplatz Gleisdreieck

Welcome to the first Last Places,

a photographic archive of play places around Germany. Call me Marcs, I’m a Canadian cyclist, freeskier and product designer living in Hamburg. I am starting this newsletter to capture the beautiful patina of old playgrounds. The playgrounds I grew up with have been replaced by new structures — very safe, and very much the same. Riding around Germany I’ve been amazed by the unique character of the metal and wood Spielplaetze peppered throughout the land. As a practice in curiousity and sense of play, I’ll share as many as I can here.

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Gleisdreieck (Track triangle)

It’s late fall. Amid the lockdown’s increasing restrictions the rural playground in Gleisdreieck is quiet. A wooden train is halted in a pit of sand. Intricate wooden construction with plastic details. The tubular sheetmetal slide is celebrated throughout the region.

Surrounded by farmland and fields, the occasional parent and child make their way down to ride the high slide.

A hand engraved and painted statistics board on the tower.

For the quantified youth;

WATER TEMPERATURE: 19℃
TOWER HEIGHT: 9,5M
SLIDE HEIGHT: 7.5M
SLIDE LENGTH: 12M
FLOORS: 8 FLOORS

A carved Kumpel sits on a relatively safe spring-powered teeter totter.

In this surfaced spinning disc you see a direct ascent into the moderns.

Only meters away from the area, a large open communal firepit filled with deadfall

A disc swing and caboose

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Hope you had fun checking out this playground. If you have a friend whose imagination this might capture, share this with them!