Karavan: Solvallsparken is a popular new park that clearly promotes physical activity and encourages children and young people to leave ipads and phones at home and meet in reality. The park has a strong identity and has become an important place for social interaction between children, adolescents, and adults.

Solvallsparken is a new district park in Rosendal, Uppsala, a district planned for 3,500 new homes. The goal has been to create an attractive park with a gathering path lined with activity areas for all ages, a park that promotes physical activities, sports, health, and social gatherings.

An important goal of the project was to give the park a distinctive identity. Therefore, a common walking and cycling route through the area was designed as a multifunctional pathway, which could be used for training, warm up before exercise and as a place for activity itself. The pathway is designed with yellow lighting poles and equipment that consistently reinforces the parks identity. A series of activity areas for play, sports and togetherness are linked to the pathway. The park’s activity areas offer something for everyone. In the more quiet part of the park there is a playground for children and toddlers between 1-5 years. Next to the playground there is an outdoor gym and boot camp trail. In the central part of the park more challenging play for children between 3-12 years can be found, with swings, a spinning disc, trampolines, wooden deck, and a big jungle gym. With an eye for the sunnier weather, the southern part of the park has activity areas for young people and older children, with parkour, a climbing wall, tennis wall, beach volleyball court, streetball (half-court basketball), outdoor table tennis, boule, and even an outdoor indoor (half-scale) floorball space! In connection with the activity areas for young people there are also 65 meters of bleacher seating. Open lawns for picnics and ball games serve to hold the parts of the park together while merging into the city forest in the west. A larger open lawn in the southern part of the park offers space for ball games, frisbee, aerobics, and soccer. The park has been designed in consultation with the adjacent SEB Usif Arena, where indoor areas are available for tennis, gym, and full-court basketball among much else. Along the sunny side of the lane there is a paved swathe with benches, sofas, lighting, and bicycle racks. This seating area will be basking in good weather, while still overlooking the activity area and the open grass areas. Running along the furnished swathe, discretely dimensioned berms subdivide areas of the border lawn, while landscaped plants, scattered birches, and solitary flowering shrubs form a green boundary towards the adjacent residential buildings and a green backdrop enclosing the furnished stretch of Solvallsparken.

Durable materials have been used in the park. The equipment is mainly made of steel and the wooden deck and stage is made of Kirai hardwood. Large 2×2 meter concrete slabs frame the activity areas. The activity areas consist of site-cast rubber and sports coatings in various warm colours.

The park has been intended and crafted as a hangout for all ages.

Location: Uppsala, Sweden
Design year: 2015
Year of construction: 2016
Area: 20 000 m2
Landscape architect: Karavan
Manufacturer of outdoor furniture: Elverdal
Client: Uppsala municipality
Budget: 1 600 000 EUR