The climbing frame designer

S designed houses - housing estates in fact. He liked the principles of Le Corbusier and built shopping centres and tower blocks out of raw concrete. It wasn’t long before his buildings lay sick and abandoned and he became obsessed with dereliction. He lost hours in empty rooms with broken windows. He didn’t believe in the paranormal but he felt the life and death of a place at the same time. Standing in the shopping centre he’d designed many years ago, he could feel the energy of the hundreds of lives that passed through and felt their absence like an emptiness in himself.

S became a grandfather and he entered his third life of playgrounds. His first had been as a child jumping off swings onto concrete. His second was as a dad terrified his sons would do the same. His third was as a grandad and he knew this would be the last spoonful of this meal. He admired the climbing frame. This tiny metal temple gate in flood water, snow and the dust of summer. 

And so S spent the remainder of his mobile years designing climbing frames to outlive him and generations after. To never face a moment of redundancy. To brave storms and the swinging limbs of undeniable youth. 

S died and while his buildings fell, his climbing frames stood strong with the graffiti of a thousand fleeting crushes and his own inscription: 

S is here.