Little Stranger: Redefining Interactive Play for Kids

From Fashion to Interactive Experience

When discussing certain designers known for their bold approaches, the concept of pushing traditional design boundaries emerges as a key element. Some designers’ influence extends beyond clothing alone, encompassing the use of color, form, and imagination to create visually stimulating experiences that provoke thought. This approach reflects architecture’s ability to challenge expectations and redefine the relationship between the user and the product.

Transforming Spaces into Play Experiences

In some cases, design experiences go beyond fashion to venture into interactive play environments for children. Transforming abandoned industrial spaces into immersive environments for kids serves as an example of how design can promote exploration, movement, and imagination. Through bright colors and soft structures, children can experience a “different world,” highlighting the role of design in creating educational and recreational spaces that stimulate both imagination and physical activity.

This image highlights the use of soft structures and bold colors to create a "world of its own," reflecting the project's goal of encouraging physical movement and imagination. — Soft yellow sculptures invite children into a world of imagination, blurring the lines between art and play. (Image © Walter Van Beirendonck)

Reimagining Play Spaces

Some recent initiatives aim to rethink the form and function of traditional play spaces. Instead of relying on classic equipment such as swings and slides, these environments are designed as artistic spaces that merge creativity with physical activity.

Integrating Art and Movement

Transforming artistic design elements into structures that children can touch and interact with reflects a move toward interactive play. The use of bright colors, unconventional shapes, and fantastical creatures helps create an environment that stimulates imagination and movement, allowing children to experience play as an exploratory journey rather than a routine physical activity.

Close-up of a large silver metallic UFO structure with glowing lights, part of an interactive play environment. — The silver UFO serves as a central landmark for exploration, stimulating curiosity through fantasy-inspired design. (Image © Walter Van Beirendonck)

Encouraging Imagination Away from Screens

Some modern design experiences aim to create environments that encourage children to use their imagination away from digital distractions. These spaces provide opportunities for direct interaction, exploration, and group play, enhancing critical and creative thinking skills from an early age.

Play as a Means of Learning About Others

Using themes such as “the stranger” or characters from different worlds can serve as an effective way to introduce children to concepts of identity, diversity, and curiosity about others. Presenting these ideas through interactive play, such as climbing or exploring colorful shapes, allows children to grasp complex concepts in a fun and experiential manner, far removed from traditional theoretical teaching methods.

Abstract mirrors reflecting an industrial window, seen from behind an orange interactive console in the Little Stranger exhibition. — Distorted mirrors and sensory elements encourage children to explore their surroundings and identity through play. (Image © Walter Van Beirendonck)

Participatory Design and the Importance of User Involvement

Modern experiences in public and artistic design highlight the importance of involving end-users in the creative process. When children are given the opportunity to contribute their ideas and opinions during the design stages, they become not just recipients, but active partners in shaping the environment. This participatory approach reflects a growing understanding that those who will use the space often have valuable insights into its needs and how to enhance the experience.

Translating Visual Styles into Play Environments

Some designs feature strong visual characteristics, such as exaggerated proportions, bright colors, and elements inspired by fantasy or science fiction. Translating these traits into play environments adds an extra dimension, as safety standards require structures to be soft and rounded, enhancing the space’s appeal and encouraging children to explore and interact freely.

A bright orange circular control console with buttons and screens, surrounded by small orange seating pods in a white ball pit. — Interactive control stations provide a tactile, screen-free way for children to engage their creative thinking skills. (Image © Walter Van Beirendonck)

Rehabilitating Industrial Sites and Their Cultural Use

Projects that transform former industrial sites play an increasingly important role in contemporary arts and culture. By converting abandoned warehouses and factories into creative spaces such as galleries, theaters, and community centers, these projects can breathe new life into buildings and open opportunities for social and cultural interaction.

Contrasting Past and Present

Using these sites to create imaginative play environments adds a new layer of meaning. The comparison between the building’s former strict function and its current colorful, lively environment creates a unique sensory and intellectual experience, allowing visitors, especially children, to explore the space and perceive the transformation from industrial past to creative present.

Children playing and running in a white ball pit around a silver UFO structure in a high-ceiling industrial space. — Free play in action: children interact with the installation, proving that design can foster social and physical growth. (Image © Walter Van Beirendonck)

Designers Expanding into Multiple Fields

Some designers’ career paths demonstrate the ability to navigate across diverse fields, from fashion to illustration, stage design, and interactive projects. This versatility reflects how principles of creative design can be applied in new contexts, where ideas transform from a conceptual vision into tangible experiences directly lived by users.

Cultural Infrastructure in Small Cities

Using creative projects as part of cultural infrastructure has become an effective tool for small cities to strengthen their identity and attract visitors. By providing innovative educational and recreational spaces for families and schools, these projects can support cultural and social development, redefining the community’s relationship with its industrial past and creative present.

Blue walls featuring illustrations of space-themed characters and UFOs behind a white ball pit. — Graphic illustrations on the perimeter walls extend the narrative of the “Little Stranger” universe. (Image © Walter Van Beirendonck)

Exploring Design Possibilities in Play Environments

Projects in which designers translate their visions from traditional media into physical environments open new opportunities to understand the relationship between design and imagination. In these contexts, the goal goes beyond aesthetics, extending to the creation of spaces that allow for free play, exploration, and personal experience.

Free Play as a Means of Creativity

These experiences show that the best designs are sometimes not those focused on the final form, but those that give users the freedom to engage and create their own experiences. Providing open, unstructured environments encourages children to develop their imagination, social skills, and understanding of the world around them in interactive and experiential ways.

Designer Walter Van Beirendonck standing in front of his "Little Stranger" installation at the industrial site. — Designer Walter Van Beirendonck posing within his creation, showcasing the transition from fashion to interactive spatial design.

✦ ArchUp Editorial Insight

The “Little Stranger” project can be seen as an example of how artistic design and interactive experience can be integrated into play environments, opening new avenues for understanding the relationship between architecture and imagination. On the positive side, the project allows children to explore non-traditional spaces and stimulate their senses, demonstrating how abandoned industrial sites can be transformed into engaging educational environments.

However, there remain several important considerations from an architectural perspective. First, the strong focus on form and imagination may reduce attention to fundamental architectural aspects such as human flow, long-term safety, and the potential for expansion or adaptation to the needs of older children or visitors from diverse groups. Second, reliance on interactive play elements and bright colors may distract from analyzing the space itself, limiting opportunities to understand the site’s spatial, climatic, and historical relationships. Third, despite the value of the current experience, questions remain regarding the project’s sustainability, maintainability, and the possibility of reusing or modifying it to serve broader educational or community purposes.

This type of project can serve as a case study for considering how artistic creativity can be combined with sustainable and functional design standards. Focusing on pre-analysis of user flow, scalability, and integration with the surrounding environment can make future projects better able to respond to the diverse and evolving needs of the community, without sacrificing imagination or interactive experience.