Studio Deng Dismantles the Equestrian Monument Into Plywood Play Structures

Studio Deng has split the equestrian monument into eight separate plywood "doubles" — benches, gates, slides, mirrors and toys — two of which stood at Lake Union Park for the 2026 Seattle Design Festival, themed IN[FLUX].

The project, called The Flatland Horse, reimagines the bronze horse-on-a-pedestal as a set of climbable, touchable public objects. The studio starts from the way a monumental horse is designed: countless revisions, with individual body parts selected and assembled into a final official figure. Studio Deng pulls those elements apart into individual plywood silhouettes. Each silhouette retains one body part in soft volume and takes on a civic function — a bench, seat, table, gate, slide, mirror, pavilion, or toy.

What did visitors encounter at Lake Union Park?

Two of the eight doubles were selected for the festival build. Gate Horse forms an archway from separated plywood profiles, framing a passage and views of the Seattle skyline through the horse's negative space. Slide Horse borrows the structural logic of a bridge: a plywood deck spans four leg frames between a staircase and a slide. The horse's lowered head forms the slide itself, and the mane becomes a side barrier.

Both structures read as horses from a distance but grow more abstract at close range, as the equine body resolves into flat plywood planes.

How are the horses built?

The team cut and sanded the structures from ¾-inch, 13-ply birch plywood. To give the retained body parts their soft volume, the designers stretched brown chenille over a waffle-like framework of half-inch foam core panels attached to the plywood. The shaggy textile suggests mane or muscle while adding a softer, touchable surface.

Slide Horse was assembled in three units using nails, bolts, and L-brackets, allowing quick installation. That modularity paid off after the festival closed: both horses were unbolted, flat-packed, and reassembled in a courtyard in Issaquah, east of Seattle — a second life for a temporary installation and a working proof of the doubles' dismountable logic.

The project carries a clear position on monuments: no pedestal, all play. By dismantling an equestrian statue into parts that people sit on, pass through, and slide down, Studio Deng turns a fixed symbol of authority into reproducible, relocatable street furniture.

Project team

• Name: The Flatland Horse
• Designer: Studio Deng (@studio_deng_)
• Design team: Meichen Wang, Yijia Xu, Qicheng Wu, Chen Yang, Fan Wu, Yangyi Li, Hanlin Cai
• Fabrication support: Brad McGuirt & North Ballard Chop Shop
• Organizer: Seattle Design Festival
• Location: Lake Union Park, Seattle, Washington, US

Six of the eight doubles remain unbuilt — a catalogue of civic objects the studio could deploy wherever a monument is wanted for use rather than contemplation.