Quality playscapes, nature and post-industrial landscapes seem to be rich ingredients for playspaces.
The construction of the Strömparken park started in 2012, and the park itself was inaugurated in 2013. Designed by the Landscape architects Johanna Grander (principle) and Ulrica Heidesjö ofTyrens AB. The park is one of those striking surprises one finds in medium sized towns such as Norrköping in eastern Sweden.
This 20 million SEK (2.3 million USD) park follows a linear route with the expressed purpose of allowing fish to pass the waterfall created by the inner city dam (Hästskodammen) adjacent to it. The small stream runs along and through the park and in a sense is its very backbone.
Stream and Paths
Those who visit the park can see, step over, step in and add water to this stream. The park brings together people and fish within a 19th century industrial landscape. “The stream within the park which flows from the “Lekbäcken” complements the bigger waterstream from the “Motala ström” that passes just outside the park” says Ulrica Heidesjö. But its function is not limited to being a piscine thoroughfare, the park aims to foster and enhance community and wellbeing in the city by adding a quality public space which residents can enjoy throughout the day and night.
Mechanisms which allow fish to go up stream and pass the dam are incorporated into the park
The designers set out and managed to create what they call an outdoor “livingroom”. People can be seen picnicking and playing in and along the water during sunny days. Families, groups of children as well as parents with toddlers all seem to find their place and interest in this park. At the same time the stream itself acts both as a destination and backdrop.
A special attraction for the younger children is the water pump, the water stream it creates and various water play options it fosters along its path. This pump ends in a small enjoyable mud pit. Since the stream of the water is powered by the children themselves, they can be seen running up and down the path of the water examining how their actions create different flows, spills and general fun. The mud pit at the end allows for the sculpting of mud creations. This rather moderate plascape is ideal for children under 5 years old.
Both Parents and Children participate is activating the water feature.
Water activates various parts of the playspace.
Water passes through various stages and playable mechanisms.
One can also enter the water itself, little pebbles allow for an easy “obstacle course” for very young children. The challenge of hopping from rock to rock over water is one that most children enjoy. The actual risk involved in traversing the water is rather minimal, but the challenge of getting to “the other side” is one of the cornerstones of every play element. Small islands are situated in the stream which can be reached by wading through the water or by hopping from stone to stone. These islands allow children to have their own beach front access to the water as they explore the water and fish.
The steam is also straddled by a walking and bike riding path, as well as residential buildings which overlook the park. These are all essential elements which allow Strömparken to be a quality, safe playscape. Talking to parents who were at the park, they all agreed that this was a unique place to hang out and play. One mother told me that she came especially from her neighborhood to enjoy what Strömparken had to offer. There is no doubt that this park is a pleasure for all that use it and an quality public space in the city.
I would like to thank Maja Pålsson from the Norrköpings kommun and Ulrica Heidesjö of Tyrens who assisted me with information about this project and to Annika Hernroth-Rothstein who showed me the park.
“The value of constructive play as a factor of development is an unworked educational mine” Edgar James Swift, 1917
In Manual training — Play problems; constructive work for boys and girls based on the play interest, William S. Marten extols the virtues of constructive play (basically building stuff from tops to ‘roller coasters’). In keeping with Victorian notions of play as an element of social control and reform, constructive play is said to counter ‘destructive play’ tendencies.
Our philosophy of play has changed since then, but the illustrations and how-tos in the book for playful items like kaleidoscopes, spinning tops, swings, stilts and slingshots are charming, and Marten’s recommendation of collecting scrap materials for constructive play prefigures the adventure playground as well as the modern idea of the Scrap Store (which I wish I saw on more playgrounds!).
See the whole book at the PublicDomainReview, original source the Library of Congress, and thanks to Chris for the tip!
Paige’s Note: Playground designers often have the goal of involving the community and particularly its children into the design process. But it can be difficult to move the conversation beyond swings and slides. In this column, Susan Solomon provides a practical list of questions for kids and adults that that elicit memories and feelings about play instead of explicit play constructs. She teams her list with with examples of designers who used community feedback creatively; including one of the best playgrounds in the world that was built to answer the expressed desire of a community for risk-taking!
DO WE KNOW HOW TO GET INFORMATION?
by Susan G. Solomon
How can we learn what children and adults want and need in playgrounds? And how can we make sure that those playgrounds are a vital public space?
These questions were front and center when I participated in a recent review for students in a graduate program for landscape architects. The focus of the course was how to create playgrounds that would stimulate creative, harmonious, healthy urban living.
One of my fellow jurors chastised (rightfully) these young designers for failing to diligently observe how local folks – young and old- used the designated spaces during the course of the day. How did participants and their activities change as the day progressed? Who interacted with whom? What did they DO?
Those who read this column regularly know that I have no confidence in asking children ” what they want” inserted into their play space. The results tend to be shallow and simplistic. Noted psychologist Roger Hart has long maintained that kids will just “spit back” what they have seen elsewhere. Adults don’t fare any better. In my November column I wrote about the Superkilen in Copenhagen and how the designers may have settled for too little information when they installed objects in the from the homelands of immigrants who live in the housing nearby.
Perhaps we need guidelines, suggestions about the best questions to ask in order to gather the most significant information. Surely there has to be stringent observation of what participants do, but there can be more. Taking a cue from Hart, I have some recommendations to make as to how to consider addressing kids or adults. Here are some possible ” ice breakers” with each group, although I am sure you can come up with many more.
Ask kids: What is the most dangerous, scary places you have ever gone?
Where would you like to go alone?
Where would you like to be right now?
What do you do that your parents tell you not to try?
What is the highest you have ever climbed?
Where do you go to be alone? To be with friends?
What is the silliest thing you have ever done?
What games do you invent?
Ask adults Where did you play as a child? As a teen?
Tell me about the neighborhood where you grew up.
What crazy things did you do when you were young?
Where do you spend free time now?
What is the best activity you and your kids share?
Do you have a favorite private space?
What value or sensation do you want your kids to experience: e.g. risk, fear, failure, satisfaction, accomplishment, beauty, tranquility, action?
Asking the question is just half of this exercise. What do you do with this data? This is where the planner/designer has to think broadly. For example, if a child says that climbing trees is scary and prohibited but he would like to continue to do it, then perhaps you have to think about access to high, dangerous looking (but not necessarily inappropriate) places where it is not known if every kid can get to the top on the first try. Another example would be to respond to a child who likes to talk with a few friends. Think about how to create small intimate, even hidden spaces to support that kind of friendship and interaction.
There are already three remarkable projects that illustrate how different processes could work. In Paris, the city wanted to rip out a deteriorating multi level playground that nestled into a hillside. In preparation to choosing a design team, the city hired a facilitator CODEJ (le Comité pour la Développement d’Espaces pour le Jeu) to conduct surveys and workshops with the parents. The most critical phase was asking the adults (most of whom were recent émigrés to France) to rank intentions they hoped to see in the final product. They had to access values such as risk taking; imaginative play; being safe. They overwhelming chose risk taking, a concept they felt they had experienced as young people but was not necessarily available on French playgrounds. The ingenious part is that CODEJ asked several teams of landscape architects to come up with a similar set of evaluations. It was a no brainer to choose BASE landscape architects when they designated risk taking as their primary goal.
The finished piece, in Parc Belleville, displays the best type of healthy risk: open ended play where children have lots of choices and never know exactly how things will end. There are several levels, including the folded concrete base on which kids can hoist themselves; the wood section that is filled with lots of odd angles and challenging surfaces; and a large orange tower for which the children also have to figure out how to make their way up and through it.
In Norway, the firm TYIN Tegnestue Architects has come up with their own strategies. Working in a poor area of Bangkok, they asked the children describe and draw their homes. From the intense sunlight the children repeatedly drew, the architects learned that shade was an appreciated luxury and would be a meaningful addition to their design. The architects also asked the children to bring in a single item from their homes and to talk about it. They were particularly taken by the glass that one child brought; it lead to discussion about light refracted through glass or prisms. it inspired them to make sure there are many hanging lights so that the children and the surrounding community can feel safe at night. They also interpreted “lantern” as another version of faceted glass, one that protects a flame. They named their sheltered multi- use space the Klong Toey Community Lantern. There are two levels (also inspired by the kids’ drawing of how they can observe each other from up above); many opportunities to climb along the walls of the oblong structure; to perform on a stage; or to play basketball or sit in cozy nooks.
Back in their own country, TYIN worked with Rintala Eggertsson Architects (2013) on a pilot project called Barnetraak for the Gran municipality and the State Department for Roads. The goal was come up with models for activity where children could pause and interact when they walk or bike to school. The completed design is outstanding: a cluster of free standing “huts” with vividly colored, unexpected interiors. If the children had been asked directly what they wanted, it is unlikely they would have thought about a staircase to nowhere or a series of broad shelves Have a look at these handsome, yet inexpensive, paradigms (which may be replicated on other Norwegian roads) and see how fantastic design is possible on a limited budget. I challenge you all to think of how many activities exist in the grouping of 4 (the number is totally variable). Just a few could be: playing house; organizing a store; performing a dance or song; hiding under shelves or jumping from one to another; moving across an overhead beam; climbing through an open “window; ” or sitting as a small group on facing benches.
We can all learn from these three examples. Remember: there are no “right” questions; no predetermined answers; no single interpretations.
Hopefully, we can liberate ourselves to learn the most from children and this data will lead us to stimulating exciting conclusions for all families.
Photos of Paris courtesy of Robert S. Solomon; the ones from Bangkok and Norway are by Pasi Aalto, courtesy of TYIN Tegnestue Architects.
I wanted to follow up on an element of Susan Solomon’s last post, the Barnetraak project of TYIN Tegnestue in collaboration with Rintala Eggertsson Architects. The playable installation was funded (surprise!) by the Norwegian department of ROADS! They intend the modular forms to be a prototype for other potential installations.
“The main aim of the project is to encourage activity in children and youngsters, by adding appeal to the options of walking or biking to school. Inactivity is a growing concern in this age group, and this project is one of many countermeasures to mend this negative development.
These small meeting places are placed along the school road in Gran. The separate and independent units are painted in strong colours, fulfilling simple and diverse functions. The main idea behind the project came into being after arranging a series of workshops for the children that would later make use of the modules. The modules can stand on their own or in clusters. At them, the kids can meet up on the way to or from school. The modules answer to practical concern while inviting play and social interaction.”
I’ve always found it strange that our primary model for play in American is the creation of centralized sites to which children are driven in cars. This is particularly true in suburban and rural areas, such as those where the Barnetraak modules were installed. Centralized playgrounds can make play and the physical exertion associated with it a singular event; a destination, something done on special occasions once-in-a-while. And we should have playgrounds like that. But affecting a child’s physical and mental health through the medium of play requires a more constant presence.
Playable features installed at a variety of scales from small (hoppable patterns in the sidewalk) to medium (retaining walls that allow, rather than forbid, balancing along their tops) to large (playable bus stops and huts like Barnetraak) give the child a playable route through their individual landscape. They welcome the child into the built environment, facilitating healthy physical interactions many times a day instead of once on a weekend. In their best forms, they also draw children and adults into more frequent community interactions than do destination playgrounds, and the spaces are naturally supervised because of foot traffic along existing paths. The clustered huts of the Barnetraak project would be something completely different–something less–if they were clustered in an isolated traditional playground space, rather than along the road.
I recently had a conversation with some nice folks at ARUP, the builder of cities. We discussed the siting of playgrounds and how placing them along paths as integral elements of the wider planning scheme instead of at the end of paths as some sort of destination alleviates many vexing playground concerns. If in your design process you are debating whether or not your playground needs a fence, or can be properly supervised, you have most likely sited it badly. Start over, and put it on a path! Better yet, consider whether the elements you were going to put in your playground-as-destination would be more effective reorganized along a traffic route to become a playground-as-path.
I’ve featured some cardboard tube constructions on the blog before, but none as delightful as this cardboard elephant dubbed “Somnis de Pes” (Dreams of Weight) and formed from 6000 recycled cardboard tubes by Spanish design studio Nituniyo for the annual Falles festival in Valencia. Most of the festival constructions–destined to be burned at festival end—are cordoned off from adults and children alike, but this one was for play, and for inserting wishes into the elephant’s round ‘pixels’. I wish I saw more temporary play installations! Ephemeral opportunities make people see space in a new way, and draw them in for a ‘time-limited’ happening when they might not otherwise visit. They are an important part of the ‘spectrum of play’: enlivening public space with playful opportunities from small to large, path to destination, temporary to permanent.
The blog is experiencing some technical instability, mostly due to the fact that it is now approaching 2000 posts and 5000 images in content, and is overtaxing its platform. An upgrade will be available soon that will make all that inspiration more accessible to you readers, but in the meantime there are some issues with the correspondent, submissions, and free downloads features. Please bear with me if you’ve submitted something or asked to be a correspondent or if the posts are a bit wonky via email over the next few weeks. Playscapes is a volunteer and unpaid effort for me, but a joy except when the site breaks down! Thanks for reading, and in advance for your patience.
As I turn my thoughts back to playgrounds after a long focus on nanoscience, I’m contemplating the many types of play seen in this video of the exemplary set of options available at Beacon Rise primary school in Bristol (home of my alma mater!) as filmed over a *single* twenty-minute recess. The exemplary set of options (I’m up to 15 types of play now, how about you?) is the result of six years of diligent work by head Chris Thomas, a dedicated school ‘play team’, and Michael Follett of OPAL, devoted to Outdoor Play And Learning.
“Pupils show respect for others in many situations, for example through the harmonious relationships evident at playtimes. The school has invested heavily in improving play facilities and resources, with a designated play coordinator. Pupils enjoy the variety of stimulating opportunities for creative play, which have helped to eliminate almost all incidents of inappropriate behaviour. This has added to pupils’ enjoyment of school. High rates of attendance further confirm this enjoyment.” Beacon Rise OSTED Report March 2012
And as a bonus, don’t miss the video of the temporary installations at their annual play day. Shrieks of laughter are one of the best measures for quality of play, and Beacon Rise and OPAL score a solid 10 of 10.
Most playscapes in our age tend to include identical, factory made products. If you walk into a playground anywhere in the world, you can easily find playstructures made by the same manufactures, and as such, include almost identical playstructures. But there is and was a different trajectory to play spaces. Egon Möller-Nielsen is one of the heros of creating play structures which serve also as art pieces. This is why when I was in my last visit to Stockholm I decided to seek out and find one of his famous structure in the Riemer Holm Park.
Möller-Nielsen has been written about on playscapes.com a number of times. For the simple reason that he is one of the founders of this genre of design of play spaces.
Having had studied at the Royal Academy of arts in Copenhagen, Möller-Nielsen was grounded in the modernist ethic. Not only stylistically, but also formally, Möller-Nielsen brought art and the ludic experience into the public sphere in a powerful way. He worked as an apprentice for the Finish architect Alvar Aalto in Finland as well as Gunar Aplund in Stockholm. The two are considered to be what some have termed “high modernists”. This term is usually used to describe an architectural movement which was characterised by a stylistic and ideological confidence. For the high modernists, the past was the enemy and the future was something to look forward to. As such, Möller-Nielsen saw a great importance in childhood and children and the spaces they inhabit. His creative endeavours included art, sculptor and illustrated picture books. He was a driving force throughout the 1940’s and 1950’s of the Swedish modernist movement and his footprint can be found in many surprising places in Swedish culture.
Following Le Corbusier he called his play-creations “Machines for playing”. Le Corbusier saw buildings as all inclusive creations which could supply all elements of living in a mechanical and efficient way. For Möller-Nielsen there was no separating art and play, there was no separating the cultural significance from the ludic experience. These play structures were all encompassing, they were both artifact and object, they were both to be used and to be looked upon. These creations were usually made from concrete or granite and so built to last. These are not tactical interventions into the urban fabric, these are concrete statements of culture. His structures have no ornament and the user can directly engage every part of the structure. Many times we see attempts by play designers use metaphor, symbolism, real and fictional characters to illustrate and animate the play structure. Ships, cars, dragons etc. are all common figures in our play areas. But Möller-Nielsen used abstract forms. The play structures looked like themselves, not like something outside the playground.
I have previously written about Axel Nordel and others who belonged to the same architectural and design movement. I believe there is a great deal to learn, not only from the forms and excitement which Möller-Nielsen created (more historic photos of his other projects here), but from the sheer optimism which can be felt in each and every one of his creations.
You could hardly be farther from the tropics than Norway but it’s where the ‘jungle’ or ‘Tarzan’ playground of tires and flying ropes has flourished for the past twenty-five years. Even more curiously, this unique playground type–to my knowledge found only in the Land of the Midnight Sun–arrived via…Alabama?
Mild-mannered child development professor Tom Jambor, who like so many got his start in playgrounds when he was dissatisfied with the play provision for his own children, spent his sabbatical at Volda Teacher Skule in 1982-1983. He had already constructed around 50 playgrounds back in Alabama, using wood poles and recycled tires arranged in a series of play moments that allowed for multiple entry points and encouraged children to flow through the playground space. Tom called his designs ‘playscapes’ (an early use of the term) and they are still available on his website.
In Norway, Tom’s ideas collided headlong with those of Asbjørn Flemmen–a professor at Volda–who was interested in motion. Together with the parents of Heltne hamlet Skule Volda they built a playground on a sloping hillside. There was no budget, so they used discarded tires and herring rope and sited them within a grove of trees that formed the ‘jungle’. (See the vintage video below…in Norwegian only!) This looks like one of the most fun playgrounds environments I’ve ever seen, and prefigures many pieces of commercial rope equipment now sold for unseemly amounts of money.
Tom went back to America, but Asbjørn kept developing the jungle playground concept in Norway. You can see the motion-rich ideas percolating and growing in his installation at a nursery school in 1989, and a test and demonstration area at Volda College in 1995 (later taken over by the municipality) where telephone poles replace the earlier trees as supports for the flying rope ‘vines’.
Playspaces designed by Ole B. Nielsen and Christian Jensen, founders of Monstrum, are well known to the followers of this PlayScapes.com. Paige Johnson has written about their creations on a number of occasions such as the excellent Tower Playground in Copenhagen, Denmark and the much discussed DOKK1 Literate Garden in Arhus, Denmark. Their design and especially the animated nature of their playspaces has attracted the attention of the international design community.
For this reason when I was in Stockholm a number of months ago, I was excited to be introduced by some friends to the Krisinebergs Slottspark playground they designed together with Nivå landskapsarkitektur. While seeing imaginative playgrounds on the internet is interesting and inspiring, it is hardly a substitute for visiting a playground in “real life”.
Upon approaching the park one is invariably struck by the the large owls towering over the park – the two owls are 5.5 meters high and make the park a landmark not only for the neighborhood, but also for the city.
The height of the towers allow for swift, exciting and extended slides. Even though the day was quite hot, the summer sun did not heat up the slides too much and they were perfectly suited for sliding.
There seemed to be structures for everyone, regardless of age, size and abilities. Even passers by have little elements they can hop over, or balance on (rather large ants).
The graphic nature of the park lends itself to storytelling and encourages dramatic engagement with the structures. The beatles, the 2.3 m high mushrooms, the ants and the owls relate to each other and create little microclimates of play. Their shapes and surfaces allow for challenging climbing surfaces and encourage the self generated invention of new games.
A closer look at the playspace reveals that the play structures were carefully and strategically placed. The elements are all quite close together and so there is usually a buzz of activity in the park. One can see other people play and they can see you. As William Whyte famously stated “What attracts people most, it would appear, is other people.” When one visits Krisinebergs Slottspark one can see other people having fun.
