Briefing: Infusing culture into a playground to aid engineering design

Cultural issues have been demonstrated as being of key importance in a design project for a playground in East Timor. This paper briefly describes the research into the specific culture of East Timor, and the use of this research as a benchmark for every decision made in the design process. It discusses the successful choice of technology, both in terms of the materials and the description of the construction process, in order to generate a high probability of adoption by the end users. It is concluded that this small-scale example could provide lessons that can be adopted on larger projects.