Marc Fornes is tops in my category of artists-I-would-like-to-see-on-the-playground and he’s definitely moving that direction with his new ‘Vaulted Willow‘: a pavilion designed for hide-and-seeking. Note particularly the wonderful dappled shadows made by the metal scales of the construction; light and shadow is so often neglected as an element of play.
“Vaulted Willow” is a wonderful example of what I’ve begun to think of as “New Play”: beautifully designed objects that serve another purpose in the public space (like shelter, or wayfinding, or sculpture) but also happen to be playable. More playable, in fact, than many purpose built playgrounds. They’re inherently multi-generational because they aren’t designed to target any specific demographic anyway. “New Play” will make silly restrictions about safety surfacing extraneous, and that’s a good thing.
Pleased to say that the ASTM did NOT increase the playground safety surfacing requirements this round…many thanks to those of you who got involved in the fight against unreasonable and burdensome playground regulations! The ASTM say that they (ahem) welcome public attention to the issue. But the battle is not yet over as the measure will be brought up again soon…watch this space for more news.
Of all the improvements to the Boston Public Library’s central branch at Copley Square, I’m most impressed by the tunnels. As kids enter the Children’s Library, they look down and choose one of five colored lines to follow. The colors represent Boston’s transit lines, so kids are cued to think of themselves as trains or travelers. If they choose to “ride” the Orange Line, they pass through bookshelves and under tunnels formed by giant wooden books. It’s a fun way to pass through the space and a surefire way to remind digital natives that books are a thing.
The tunnels are topped by lion cubs, which run through a series of color changes. A librarian told me that the colors will eventually react to children approaching them. The cubs, designed by 42 Design Fab, refer to the giant lions in the main library’s entry.
Sensory walls are an excellent addition to the space. Kids can play with magnets, sound, texture, and movement, or just watch the mesmerizing bubbles and lights. There’s even a secret nook that peeks in on the grownup library. It’s equipped with a steering wheel and ignition key.
The space is cozy and comfortable, especially the StoryScape area. A throne for read-alouds and lots of loose parts enrich the space. Mystic Scenic Studios designed building facades that resemble Boston brownstones (are you starting to pick up the theme?). The building’s windows double as bookshelves.
Teen Central features an urban industrial style, with lounge areas (with and without video games) and diner-style seating where teens can actually eat. There’s also a digital maker space with 3D printer and audio-video editing equipment.
For belated #TBT (since I am once again traveling) thanks to reader Mike for sending in his gorgeous family photo of Fred Schumm’s “Imagine Playground” in Colorado Springs c. 1958 (since destroyed). I always welcome your additions to the playground history posts…they preserve a record of great play that will otherwise be lost. If you have photos of historic playgrounds, do send them in!
I had the chance to visit Berlin this winter and is was a great lesson about playing with nature in the city.
It feels that playgrounds are more seen like « freedom opportunities » than in France. I don’t know elsewhere, but here, you often feel that you’re meant to do such thing here and such thing there. And I guess we always feel it’s better elsewhere !
Anyway, I found by chance in Berlin 2 « natural play area ». They are not really playgrounds but places that look like nature where you can build, run, jump.
Robinienwäldchen
In this place in the middle of the city (that probably couldn’t be built) grew trees (false acacias). Public authorities decided to make it a place for nature and kids. It looks quite like a small wood but it is closed and secured with a fence, and you can find big branches kids can play with.
This kind of place is a great idea to convince public authorities to keep some natural sites in the city.
You can see sunny lively picture of the place here.
Park am Gleisdreieck
I found the same kind of area in this brand new park. Here, a special place for « nature » was created. It is a really artificial landscape, quite rough, with sand, hills and some bushes. And here again, big branches to build stuff.
I was really amazed that a new park creates a place that looks like a wasteland, so kids cans feel free to do stuff.
The park looks really great and has a lot of other play features an play scapes. On of them is those big swings outside a play zone. It seems that adults feel free to swing in the city, as it was used on this tuesday morning.
Now this is a crazy place. Paige has already written about it , you can read her post here. This is an adult free zone where children can play, build, make fires, hang out in an old car !
It definitely has this destroy look as the Adventure playgrounds but it really looks great.
Parents are not allowed but there is always an adult from the Kolle 37 team when the place is open.
I only had a few days in Berlin but I hope Playscapes will have a german correspondant or reader to tell us more about those projects and many others.
A bit belatedly because of my fiendish travel schedule, Happy Birthday to Aldo van Eyck (March 16) who would be 97 today, and to the blog (March 18), which is 7! Longtime readers have heard the story before but I’ll repeat it for the newbies…I started this blog almost exactly on Aldo van Eyck’s birthday. Only I didn’t know who he was then, or that he had built over 400 playgrounds in Amsterdam after World War II or that he had been the first architect to take playgrounds seriously as designed public space, and to see their potential for building community. I just felt frustrated that the playgrounds I saw around me were so expensive, and so ugly, and so poorly designed as community spaces, and that it was so hard to find information about any alternatives or about the history that had formed the playground. I thought maybe if I posted the examples I had found online someone else might be looking for the same information. It turned out many of you were.
I called the blog ‘Playscapes’ because I wanted playgrounds to be seen as fully designed landscapes for play. Seven years ago, people often asked me what that meant. Now, the word itself has come into wide use to simply signify a place for play that is somehow different that the equipment-based construction conjured up by the traditional word ‘playground’. A ‘playscape’ may mean a natural space, or a avant-garde one, and could be indoors or out, but it is always a *place* that is thoughtfully, intentionally, and fully designed, not a collection of expensive equipment thoughtless plopped into the ground (which is now covered in safety surfacing).
Your birthday gift this year, dear readers, is the chance to download (for free!) a copy of Nils Norman’s wonderful book on London’s unique landscape of adventure playgrounds. His compilation of their designs, history and architecture has been nearly unavailable since the small print run sold out years ago and many thanks to Nils (more on Nils’ play work tomorrow) and publishers Four Corners Books for generously making it freely available to inspire great play. Aldo would be proud. Hum happy birthday as you download your copy, either from the link below or from the sidebar, alongside gift downloads from past celebrations of Aldo’s and Playscapes‘ birthdays.
Imagine looking out your window daily and seeing these modern, multi-hued sculptures! The local residents (and passers-by) of the Emerald City Condos in North York can thank Douglas Coupland, the artist behind these constructed forms.
The installation titled Four Seasons consists of four colourful, vertically-stretched cones that are 48 feet tall, each representing a season [winter, spring, summer, and fall]. They embody Coupland’s design aesthetic:
“When I think of landscape, I think of pencil crayons you get at school. The happy feeling you get in your head when you open the crayons and the colours are so shocking and bright … I wanted to create a landscape from scratch with unexpected objects, in an expected location.”
Here’s a video of Coupland in his West Vancouver studio discussing this public art project.
Playground is located in the Chopin City Park in Swinoujscie (Poland) and designed by Arthur Bronisz, Alicja Jasińska, Joanna Antosik and Anna Miszczyńska (Bronisz Land Design).
Before the World War II the cemetery was located in the park. Therefore the construction works must be carried out with particular care. The remains of the tombstones were transferred to the municipal cemetery. The construction of the park has provoked media interest. The playground was exceptionally ‘controversial’ because of the concrete elements. Townsfolk, officials and the media criticized the project for the used material, shape and gray color. Designers proceeded from the assumption that elements of the playground will move the imagination of children. And so it happened. Since the children took possession of the playground protests died down, and the place is one of the biggest attractions in the region – both for Polish children and for the youngest residents of the nearby German village.
I first came across this structure when visiting the Israel Museum a number of months ago. Construction had yet to be completed; perhaps this is the best time to assess a structure, since one can see the bare structure and its workings. The simple yet sophisticated construction embodies what is sometimes lacking in architecture, namely subtlety.Its finesse in detailing, craftsmanship and professionalism are apparent in what has been described by the creators as “micro- architecture”.
Photography by Amit Geron. Image courtesy of Deborah Warschawski and Ifat Finkelman architects
The two architects Deborah Warschawski and Ifat Finkelman have managed to bring Israel playscape design to a new level. Although they are quite modest in describing it as such, this area in the museum seems to have been utterly rejuvenated and transformed. I remember it as having been a rather sad, dark space, having spent many years at the museum as a child. The area where the structure was erected used to include a simple sandbox with a statue situated within it. The sandbox was framed by a concrete bench and surrounded by a number of other concrete benches.
Study model. Image courtesy of Deborah Warschawski and Ifat Finkelman architects
In a comprehensive and intriguing talk given by the designers at the Bezalel School of Architecture the two architects described the entire process of design and construction. Their first challenge was the museum site itself. The museum has a very specific architectural and spatial character, situated on a prominent hillside within the city. It was designed by one of Israel’s most regarded architects Alfred Mansfeld, and recently renovated by Efrat-Kowalsky Architects. This challenge meant that the designers had to present a proposal which would compliment and improve the space, without competing with it’s particular character. “No concrete” they were told, “There is enough concrete here.” (paraphrase).
Photography by Amit Geron. Image courtesy of Deborah Warschawski and Ifat Finkelman architects
The area in which the structure was to be created is the entrance to the Youth Wing of the museum and serves as a square in which groups congregate to start their museum tours. The Director of the Youth Wing, Tali Gavish, described this area to me as an intermediate space in which families, children, parents, the elderly and people of various abilities pause, relax and casually interact.
Photography by Amit Geron. Image courtesy of Deborah Warschawski and Ifat Finkelman architects
In the centre of the proposed construction area stands a sole tree. This presented the almost symbolic challenge that faces every designer; how to incorporate the living organism into the design. The designers decided to frame the tree in a manner not dissimilar to Lacaton & Vasals 1998 project designed in Cap Ferret, France. The framing of the tree – creating a child’s lookout, and ultimately the “framing” of every tour that embarks from this point makes this a vital, dynamic locus within the museum complex.
Photography by Amit Geron. Image courtesy of Deborah Warschawski and Ifat Finkelman architects
Various sketches were submitted by the architects even after they were awarded the commission. The process of selection of design, experimentation and development seemed to continue from conception to inauguration. They had only one year to create the space.
Photography by Amit Geron. Image courtesy of Deborah Warschawski and Ifat Finkelman architects
The designers describe how they wanted to create a feeling of detachment from the ground and to lift the structure into the realm of imagination; providing a sense of a proverbial treehouse. The concepts of “up” and “down”, “inner” and “outer” views, places and destinations were central to their design.
Photography by Amit Geron. Image courtesy of Deborah Warschawski and Ifat Finkelman architects
At some point in the design process the two realized that they were dealing with “giant furniture” rather than “micro-architecture”, and that the language and the rhythm of the structure should take its vocabulary more from the tradition of furniture design than from architecture. The detailing had to be executed with micro-precision, also due to the fact that that Standards Institution of Israel scrutinized the design and construction down to every nut and bolt. This attention to detail proved to be important and useful, as they found that they were creating a space for the proportions of a child. We know from the writings of Richard Dattner that thinking of the proportions of both parents and children, creates spaces that are unique and challenging to children. The entire structure was created by a series of wooden joints, hiding the structural rafters in a way that makes the structure both visible and integral to the entire design. A type of an honest modernist gesture, clear to all that use it.
Photography by Amit Geron. Image courtesy of Deborah Warschawski and Ifat Finkelman architects
When construction was almost complete the official from the Standards Institution of Israel insisted that a net be placed around the tree (“because apparently in playgrounds children are not allowed to come in physical contact with real trees”), but this too meshed into the design. So the result is a complete sinuous form.
Cleverly lit, the structure becomes a sculptural element during the evening, transforming itself into an object of art which enables this space to become a nocturnal vision. The benches that compliment the structure surround the tree house. Some of these can be shifted in order to create fora for those preparing to embark on tours of the museum.
Photograph by Amit Geron. Image courtesy of Deborah Warschawski and Ifat Finkelman architects
The undulating ground seemed to pose a special challenge for the regulatory authorities, but the designers decided to insist on remaining faithful, as much as they could, to the original design. Finally everyone was satisfied and the structure was inaugurated.
Photography by Amit Geron. Image courtesy of Deborah Warschawski and Ifat Finkelman architects
We have here an example of how beauty – a much feared word in the world of architectural writing – can be embedded in a play space. It is true that this place is situated within a museum and is not a public park in the same way that a neighborhood park might be, but the construction of this piece possibly heralds a new or renewed age in which we create places of beauty in our ludic environments.
Photography by Amit Geron. Image courtesy of Deborah Warschawski and Ifat Finkelman architects
I’m a bit late to the party on this one, but there is still time to help build Parasite Skate Park in New Orleans. As older children and teens have been pushed off the traditional playground by ever increasing regulation and ever dumber and less-adventurous designs, skateparks are their place to play. I’m particularly excited to see the Parasite design including landscaping, community seating space, and even skateable sculpture. Go support their Kickstarter...I am!
If you’ve enjoyed perusing Architecture of Play you should also head over to Nils’ website, dismalgarden, where he has made years of photographic archives of playscapes freely available to all. It’s a treasure trove of ideas and sites; many of adventure playgrounds around the world, “pockets of disorder” in the urban space. I picked a few favorites for today’s post but will be returning to some of the sites for examination in more detailed posts. Nils also has assembled a unique photographic collection of defensive architecture–unplayful interventions like anti-skate features–that should make us question how ‘public’ ‘public space’ really is, and what it means when play is forbidden and confined. Nils’ body of work, which includes refreshing simple play installations as well as art and commentary on what playgrounds can mean (adventure playscape and edible garden as a monument to civil disobedience? Yes, I say) will make you think differently about the significance of spaces for play.
Adventure Playground North Wales photo circa 2014 via: Atlantic Monthly http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/03/hey-parents-leave-those-kids-alone/358631/
There is a tendency, among play advocates in the US, to romanticize the adventure playgrounds of Europe and Japan. Adventure playgrounds are sometimes described as the purest expression of self-directed play. They are a place where kids actively create their own play AND space and are empowered (under the watchful eye of a playworker) to take risks that are off-limits in other settings.
There is an equally strong tendency to write off the possibility of Adventure Playgrounds in the US. We tried them in the 70′s and they didn’t stick outside a few significant but isolated exceptions. They will never work in our litigious culture.
Is there a culturally appropriate ‘American’ version of the adventure playground? What does it look like? How does it function? Who builds it? Maintains it? Uses it? What space does it occupy (culturally and physically)?
I was struck when I read references to Lady Allen Hurtwood and adventure playgrounds in the description of Parisite Skate Park in New Orleans. I am not saying the two are synonymous but take a look at the kickstater video and let me know what you think. While you are at it contribute to their crowd funded playscape if you can! One day left, help them go big!
St. John’s Wood Adventure Playground, London c. 1968 via: http://www.thearchitectureofearlychildhood.com/2012/01/post-war-adventure-or-junk-playgrounds.html
A joyful, $2.6-million space is sandwiched between condos in Toronto’s waterfront district. Designed by gh3, this urban park was named after Canadian journalist, radio/television host, and activist June Callwood, who (co-)founded over 50 social aid organizations that challenged issues pertaining to women, censorship, etc. The City of Toronto dedicated the space to her in 2005.
Here, one would find a reflecting pool, trees, and rubberized surfaces within the park’s six zones. Instead of green grass, there is bright pink Ure-Tech to cushion the play areas. The inspiration behind the landscape design was a quote from one of Callwood’s final interviews before her death: “I believe in kindness.” Her touching words from the audio recording (or ‘voiceprint,’ partially seen in the above photo) are visibly mapped out on the physical site — in the form of an abstract sonic wave. This special, personalized contour extends throughout June Callwood Park.
Actual sounds are also integrated into the space via a public art installation called OKTA by Montréal’s Stephen Bates and Douglas Moffat. These sounds are produced when its sensors are triggered by cloud movements. June Callwood Park is definitely easy on the eyes (and ears).
City of Toronto. (n.d.). June Callwood Park Now Open. Retrieved from http://www1.toronto.ca/wps/portal/contentonly?vgnextoid=0cf60dbe867d8410VgnVCM10000071d60f89RCRD&vgnextchannel=5b1619f8602a0410VgnVCM10000071d60f89RCRD.
If you can get to Salem, Mass. before September 2015, you can enjoy the Peabody Essex Museum’s exhibit Branching Out: Trees as Art. It’s part of the Art & Nature Center, which offers playful experiences that appeal to all ages. Here are some highlights from the current exhibit.
Arrange hand-made wooden blocks on a magnetic board. Note the tweens working together in the first photo below.
Tap out a tune on a lovely wooden xylophone.
Create a funky critter using parts made from wood and recycled materials. Excellent use of magnets here, too.
Try eight different percussion instruments at this table, part of the toddler-oriented Investigate! Zone.
Finally, drop your tweens and teens in the Maker Lounge, which suggests engineering challenges but encourages visitors to come up with their own problems and solutions.
They’ve got the obligatory 3D printers, but I’d rather see every museum (and science classroom, and family room) have bins of loose parts like the ones seen here. This is not an endorsement, but I’m impressed by the Makedo tools that let kids saw and poke holes in cardboard, then fasten it with screws and hinges. The kid-friendly tapes (clear and masking) don’t work well with cardboard, and these seems to solve the problem while giving more options for fastening.
The Peabody Essex Museum is definitely headed in the right direction as far as creating playscapes that link art, nature, and technology.
Since the “The Land” documentary and Hannah Rosin’s piece in the Atlantic on the overprotected child, alot of people are talking about adventure playgrounds in the United States. We’ll see where all that leads, but someone who is actually DOING adventure play, and has been for years, is Alex Gilliam, whose Public Workshop organization enables disadvantaged teens to design and construct their own adventurous playscapes. Public Workshop’s latest project at the Western School of Science and Technology in Phoenix Arizona uniquely connects play design to the STEM curriculum: at a non-wealthy, public charter school. In the context of 45 minute class periods. So don’t tell me it can’t be done. The playground was placed in a transition area between the lower and upper schools to build community between the age groups, and constructed with parental involvement. Adventurous on so many levels!
P.S. You can support Public Workshop by making a purchase from the Building Hero Product Store: beautifully designed objects made by members of a young adult community design leadership and entrepreneurship program in Philadelphia.
Thanks to Arizona based artist Bobby Zokaites for submitting his “Shifting Sand Land”, a playground game system based upon the desert level in Super Mario Brothers. I love a well-designed overlap between virtual and physical play space for its ability to encourage video game lovers to venture into the playground. In effect, “Shifting Sand Land” is an all-ages, outdoor version of “Can’t Touch the Ground”, a classic playground game.
“Many Artists pursue work as a challenge to or a critique of culture, in order throw the viewer “off balance,” Shifting Sand Land does just that…the game is designed as a series of small platforms with hemispherical foundations; “islands” that will constantly change a person’s center of gravity and keep the participants on their toes. Each module is constructed with a hemispherical steel shell, filled with water. This water acts as a counterweight slowing down the movement of the “island”. Attached to the shell is a wooden deck and an upholstered bumper, this bumper makes sure no one scrapes a shin or bumps a knee; combining the weight of the water and the geometry of the bumper make these “islands” stable so that they cannot be unintentionally flipped over. The overall composition includes 25 modules ranging in scale from eighteen inches to six feet. These larger “islands” will allow several people to interact with each other, sort of like those old 4 person seesaws, creating a more dynamic form of play.”
Brian says that his work, which combines childhood adventure with construction and assembly methods inspired by industrial processes, is inspired by this great quote from one of our play heroes, Richard Dattner (download his book from the sidebar!), who says that playgrounds exist “Between the world of fantasy and the world of reality, between the world of intuition and the world of logical things, and between the world of solitary play and the world of social cooperation and mutual understanding.”
Paige’s Note: Tim Gill of rethinkingchildhood updates us, below, on the fight to bring sanity to the ASTM’s playground committee, who essentially feel that children are only safe playing on surfaces equivalent to bubble wrap. If they now pass a ballot requiring even more stringent (and highly expensive!) safety surfacing on playgrounds, they will be doing so against the recommendations of academic injury researchers. Why might they flout the advice of such experts? Quite coincidentally, there is alot of money to be made in safety surfacing. Feel free to voice your views to Joe Koury (jkoury@astm.org) who is the staff contact, and George Sushinsky (gsushinsky@gmail.com) who is the chair of the committee.
Leading child injury prevention researchers at the British Columbia Injury Research and Prevention Unit have today called on ASTM to put on hold its proposal to tighten playground surfacing standards.
The call is in an article written by Associate Profs Mariana Brussoni and Ian Pike of the Unit, along with Associate Prof Alison Macpherson of the School of Kinesiology & Health Science at York University. Between them, the authors have decades of research experience in child injury prevention.
In the piece, posted on the Unit’s website, the authors state that they have “become increasingly concerned that some of our efforts to keep children safe may be doing unintended harm – particularly as it relates to children’s play.” They also argue that “changing the standards will not reflect the best decision for children.”
The authors conclude by urging ASTM to “put the proposal on hold, and to engage in a wider debate about how standards can help us get the balance right.”
In making their case, the authors make five key points, informed by their position as independent and impartial experts in injury prevention:
Head injuries on the playground are extremely rare and there is no evidence that they are increasing on playgrounds.
The head injury criterion (HIC) is measured by dropping a head form straight down, but children do not fall that way.
Ripping out and replacing surfacing is a very expensive proposition.
Kids want and need to take risks and experience uncertainty. So reducing risks has major ramifications.
We are doing a miserable job of providing stimulating play opportunities for children.
The article, which has numerous links to peer reviewed academic papers, echoes the case made recently in a paper by Prof David Ball, Professor of Risk Management at Middlesex University’s Centre for Decision Analysis and Risk Management, and by me here in January, with an update in March. It is also a model of brevity and clarity.
We know from ASTM that there will a month-long ballot of members of the committee, which will begin in the next day or two. The authors have asked ASTM to distribute their paper along with the ballot notice. Let’s hope it does.
Let’s hope too that committee members consider carefully the paper’s arguments.
Surely when even injury prevention experts who have devoted decades to reducing child accidents imply that playground safety has gone too far, it is time to stop.
For #TBT, the story of the dragon of Mercer Island park dragon, a rare happy ending for a mid-century playground sculpture!
Since its installation in 1965 on the island off the coast of Seattle Washington (photos are from a 1966 feature in Sunset magazine), the 50-foot long, six ton polka-dotted dragon by artist Kenton Pies had gradually become more difficult to keep in repair. And here I want to point out that this is hardly a criticism; few playgrounds of manufactured equipment–though touted for their durability–would last for fifty years! All play pieces require maintenance, and none last indefinitely. But many wonderful vintage play sculptures have been unnecesarily ripped out by municipalities as ‘dated’ or even ‘unsafe’ (thank you, ASTM) without consulting either the artists that made them or the communities that loved them.
Happily the Mercer Island Parks and Recreation Department was more enlightened than that, and they sought out Kenton, now 81 and living in Montana, to inquire about repairing the dragon. After repair estimates proved to be too costly he proposed building a bigger and better dragon that would be around for many new generations of Mercer Island kids. For $60,000. And here I want to point out that this custom artisinal creation is *way cheaper* than most formulaic, boring, manufactured playgrounds, whose average municipal installation cost in the US is now around $175,000. And the community will never love the play space, never build lifetime memories around it, like Mercer Island has around its dragon.
Still nestled in the trees, with the original dragons head close by in the underbrush as an extra play element and also to satisfy adults nostalgic for the play dragon they remember, the new Mercer Island Dragon should last another fifty years.
Artist Patrick Dougherty’s Stickworks are always play-ful, but the whimsical maze-like construction at the Olympia Hands-on Children’s Museum in Olympia, Washington, described as spiralling up “like whipped cream with towers” is specifically designed for play with pathways and archways and secret hiding places. Don’t miss the fascinating video (below) that shows the construction process (who knew that you needed a crew of leaf-strippers?). And I love his enunciation of a concept that we’ve talked about here before at Playscapes as “feel-risky-play-safe”: “You don’t want to lose your children, you just want them to feel as though they can be lost”. Lost in a Stickworks sculpture is a great place to be!
