Designing Gender-Neutral Playgrounds: The Impact of Natural Environments on Children's Behaviors

Abstract

Poor quality habitat profiles of artificial coastal structures for biodiversity growth compared to natural shore have led researchers to utilize ecological engineering principles in creating habitat enhancement models mimicking the natural environment to help improve living conditions for marine organisms. Extensive global trials have been conducted with concrete formulations incorporating eco-friendly materials and recycled resources. However, eco-concrete production for marine environment use is still lacking in Malaysia. The technology involved in casting, moulding, and demoulding remains at the experimental stage, with unreported comparisons of different moulding materials used for casting geometrically complex habitat enhancement models. This study evaluated different casting, moulding, and demoulding techniques using locally produced eco-concrete. The main aim of this study is to determine the effect of different materials including plaster of Paris, drilling wood, expanded polystyrene, rubber foam, and vacuum forming on the mould production time, labour requirements and fabrication factors. Vacuum forming mould is highly preferred for its quick production time, less work, design uniformity, and ability to cast larger habitat enhancement models. However, the demoulding methods require improvements and further experimentation to ensure an easier demoulding process and reusability of the mould for long-term production.