Hadassah Academic College is proud of graduate, Yaniv Ziegler, an employee of Psagot Playgrounds, Ltd., who was recently awarded the coveted RED DOT award for his design of a new playground facility called “Bubbles” - which will soon be erected in K’far Yona. This international award, the “Oscar” of the design world, is considered an international seal of quality in all things related to innovation and creative thinking in design. The award was made on September 25, 2019 in Singapore and highlighted Ziegler’s design that won out over some 4200 design projects that were presented for the competition, from 48 countries around the world.

Bubbles is a massive structure made of steel, despite that its inspiration was one of the most fragile phenomena in nature – a bubble. The structure consists of large metal bridges on the ground that embody the creation of bubbles – and shows bubbles in their many phases of formation. The structure helps those children using it to develop a range of their muscles, to increase coordination, to heighten their sense of self-confidence and capability, and to develop their skills for their spatial location and movement. All this was designed to create the impression of an empowering feeling for the child and their accompanying parent.

Yaniv Ziegler explained: “one of the principles that we built into the development of playgrounds is the integration of populations at the extreme range of abilities, and we do this in a number of ways, using contrasting colors in order to focus the vision, transition areas for wheelchairs, and more. When I design a playground, I try to see it from the point of view of all the children, in order to create an equitable experience for all of them.” Psagot Playgrounds related: “we were very excited to receive so much incredible feedback about this project. Psagot Playgrounds is a creative company that independently designs products at every stage of their development, and allows product designers to dream big, to reach for the sky, and to fulfill their creative drive. Just when we heard about receiving the design prize, the first model was in the first stages of preparation for installation at a central municipal park in K’far Yona.”