Udo Herderich is assembling a submarine. The large but unheated hall offers enough space for it. It used to belong to a huge quarry operation in Kirchheim near Würzburg. Today, the approximately 30,000 m² premises of the company Schwarz Garden & Playspace Design are reminiscent of a romantic landscape painting, where magnificent industrial buildings once stood instead of castle ruins. On the deck of the submarine, imagined as having surfaced from the water, a color print reveals what the play equipment for a public kindergarten in Zellingen will one day look like: The ship's hull, accessible from the end faces, consists of a concrete sewer pipe with a diameter of 180 cm and will be half-buried in the ground.
Weather-resistant planed Douglas fir structural timber
A slightly hilly ground surface is set to be transformed into the surface of a stormy sea. Instead of on the concrete pipe, however, the submarine's superstructure is currently still standing on sturdy trestles. Visible is a supporting structure adapted to the pipe's curvature with a slatted deck, as well as a wooden tower with a small hatch. Everything is made from highly weather-resistant planed Douglas fir structural timber.
The sculptor and forester Udo Herderich prepares and installs the vertical railing posts. They consist of crooked, thin, and longitudinally halved small locust tree trunks. The black locust is one of the most weather-resistant native hardwoods. Using the band saw, he deburrs the sharp-edged timbers and gives them an uneven chamfer. Outside, master carpenter Moriz Bukovski has prepared the small trunks with a power debarker and an angle grinder. The majority of the ship's deck and the tower were built by Udo Herderich and his fellow joiners in the heated workshop, which is equipped with woodworking machinery from Felder and Format4.
"Kids, be brave!"
Landscaper Holger Schwarz has specialized in large play equipment integrated into gardens for 25 years and employs up to eight seasonal staff. He uses black locust for the main structure and for elements intended to spark the imagination, and Douglas fir for planed, functional components. Holger Schwarz also takes care of the complete landscaping, including all surrounding earthworks. For him, the focus is on the children and their imagination. He thinks nothing of boring slides with only a single function. He likes to use the terrain and the equipment to build upwards, to challenge the children to be daring. He says: "I entice the children out of their shells."
