Dear readers,

It’s the time of year when I go around delivering microscopes to elementary schools in my home state as part of my scientific society’s Ugly Bug Contest, which is putting me way behind on the blogging!  So in the interim I hope you can help me address the many emails I’ve been getting over the last six months which ask me for advice on where to study, or how to get into playground design.   If you’re a play designer, please share your story, and any advice you have to budding designers, in the comments!   Advice on relevant academic programs you know of, as well as unconventional and serendipitous paths you’ve followed, are all appreciated!  I’ll award a prize–free download of all the playscapes press books–to one comment selected at random.

Paige

P.S.  For inspiration, the images accompanying the post show the ‘Jules Verne’ inspired design of Galopin Parques.  There should be more playgrounds  inspired by Jules Verne…

The post On Becoming a Playground Designer: tell your story! appeared first on Playscapes.

In thinking about those of you who dream of being playground designers, I’m reminded of a letter I received sometime ago from Bianca Habib, and I think her journey is perhaps instructive as to the difficulties a young creative designer faces.

“.. in 2003 I came to Spain as a trainee (in an influential architecture firm) constructing public and community gardens, but after 5 years I gave up that job because the installations were not done to neighborhood need but to the company’s needs…I was always trying to give special attention to the playground areas, but I was constantly cut by the bosses of the council.  And let´s not even talk about plant elements…they always used temporary flowers instead of accepting my designs for perennial plantings.

“So  (insert big commercial manufacturer here)  invited me to work with them, and it seemed to be great and I accepted…… in 1 year I worked on over 10 projects in different Councils in Spain.  At the beginning there was an intention of designing different playgrounds for each site according to the existing landscape, but this was not true; ultimately the big company liked money more than people and just finished the parks as they liked.

It shows in the “Hormiguero” playground Bianca sent me.  ”The original council and company idea was to make it as big and as bright as it could be (no comment)” .  But it ended up as a mishmash of features borrowed from other sites (the Carve play wall and Buga-style safety surfacing like ant trails)  mixed with a creative idea (Bianca’s own design for a ‘confetti’ style bench/jumping stone), and ultimately poorly realized when they nixed her plans for natural surfaces, a local path reference, and a bigger hill.

“Some details they let me decide ( like colors of surfacing etc…)……but some others…… what an insignificant hill! It should have been much much much bigger…..but to save money or thinking, they made it smaller.  Nobody followed my directions.”

I relate this not to put any of you off, because clearly great designers are needed!  And fortunately I’ve seen alot of change, and a much greater appetite for custom designs, even in the two years since Bianca wrote me that letter.  But her struggles demonstrate the challenges a designer faces in any public space design and particularly that of playgrounds.

So don’t be afraid to do your own thing, rather than join the big firms.

And send me your most interesting and creative work, and I’ll try to help out!

The post Hormiguero (Ant Hill) Playground, Bianca Habib, 2009 appeared first on Playscapes.

Playscapes’ friend Lianne sent through this climbing thicket in Munich German as a follow-on to the Florian Aigner post;  she says it is at  the intersection of Untersbergstraße & Weißenseestraße in Munich.  Same idea of a wood tangle but with a more rustic treatment of the wood member and a different sort of attachment to the ground…because of that I don’t think it is Aigner’s work, so if any of my German readers know to whom I should credit this nice playscape get in touch!

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I’m intrigued that designers Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec made what are essentially electric merry-go-rounds for BMW i at Milan 2013.  Given the regrettable removal of merry-go-rounds from playgrounds everywhere (and leaving you to your own judgement about whether that was necessary for safety reasons) I’d rather us think more deeply about what a merry-go-round can be than just give up on a form that has provided so much fun to so many.

I like the roofs on this installation, and the waving textiles, and the way the individual carousels are assembled into a group.  And it’s so amusing to see men in suits on them, even if they are quiet!

What do you think a 21st century merry-go-round could be?

via dezeen

The post Quiet Merry-go-Rounds, Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, Milan, 2013 appeared first on Playscapes.

Here’s one take on the 21st century carousel:

“Ecosistema Urbano has designed this play structure with two particular focuses in mind. The first is to promote education through play. We believe that teaching children about alternative methods for generating electrical power with their own physical experiences, sends a subtle message about the potential for creative and a more sustainable approach to urbanism.

Second, is to use efficient materials that also serve to highlight the project’s unique design. The kinetic energy released by the children’s hanging and turning on the ropes is captured via carousel structure and stored in a battery underneath the play site. This energy is used to generate the lighting in the evenings. The mechanism of energy production and lightning is so simple as a bike dynamo. The color of the lights also changes according to how much energy has been generated by the children on any particular day.”

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m uncomfortable with the idea of energy-generating play features in developing areas, because of their potential to be used coercively.  But that’s unlikely to happen in such a public urban space, and this is an interesting and engaging proposal…currently under development.

[images and text from Ecosistema Urbano; found at archdaily]

The post Energy Carousel, Ecosistema Urbano, Dordrecht Netherlands, proposed appeared first on Playscapes.

Cynthia Gentry of the Atlanta Taskforce on Play sends word that the ATL playground, winner of the Playable10 competition, has been named #1 in the “50 Things Every Atlantan Must Do!” by Atlanta Magazine.  This is a great example of a playspace becoming part of a city’s identity.  I was pleased to be a judge for Playable10.

Archdaily has a great new article on Toshiko Horiuchi MacAdam and her crocheted playgrounds.

The Child and Nature Network are again partnering with Clif in the Backyard Game Contest…enter by June 17th to win $15,000 for your favorite non-profit or a $10,000 scholarship.  

Budding Playground designer Lisa Kramer is trying to raise $1755 via indiegogo to build a playground in Phumlani village, Cape Town, South Africa.  It’s a reminder to all of us that playgrounds shouldn’t cost so much!

The Center for Ecoliteracy has a new free download about making school gardens:   “Creating Gardens of Goodness,.  They also offer the perennially popular Getting Started: A Guide for Creating School Gardens as Outdoor Classrooms.   If you’re making a school garden, think about how you can add play to it as well!  Consider a swinging gate, a climbable edging, a sand pit, some stumps as sitting/jumping platforms…

The post Play Notes for your April 19, 2013 weekend appeared first on Playscapes.

I love it that this design by Montreal based Toboggan was inspired by pasta!  Their 11,000 s.f. indoor installation at the Manitoba Children’s Museum includes a climbing structure inspired by kid-favorites like lasagna and mac and cheese.  But my favorite feature is the chic op art slide, in which the act of sliding becomes an immersive optical and artistic experience.   And it’s wide for cooperative sliding (though the museum doesn’t seem keen on allowing that, safety concerns and all…)  Slides-should-be-wide.

[photos via toboggan design, thanks Laurent!]

The post Op art Slides and Lasagna Playscapes, Manitoba Children’s Museum, Toboggan, 2011 appeared first on Playscapes.

JYA Architect’s ‘Pavilion for Children’  reimagines the familiar mid-century jungle gym with a series of interstial spaces that are useful for quiet or cooperative play.   I love the ordered nature of a grid, and this is a really pleasing interpretation of a classic piece of playground equipment.

The post Pavilion for Children, Gangjin gun, South Korea, JYG Architects, 2013 appeared first on Playscapes.

Artist Maggie Mills‘ works portray a comfortable subconscious–a surrealism without threat–of thoughtful children in sparsely populated dreamscapes that derive from the outdoors, from sport, and from play.  Some of these take my breath away.  Thanks to reader Anna for sending in her work, along with the notice that Maggie has a show, called ‘Second Home’ until May 4 at the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education in Philadelphia.

“The natural world has become a secondary home for most of us, with the developed world structuring our lives. The decomposition of nature and industry and the perceived fragmentation of time and space due to technology define our environment.  The young navigate these inherited spaces often with little guidance.

The Schuylkill Center acts as a second home for the children who attend its afterschool program.  Although the imposition of the man-made is measured and beneficial at the Schuylkill Center, humanity’s mark is present. These marks, made largely by adults, affect the spaces where children play, learn, and develop into future architects of the environment.  In Second Home, this narrative is articulated through the deletion, expansion, or simplification of elements of the literal world.”      – Maggie Mills, 2013

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Reader and landscape architect James Furse-Roberts sent me links to some wonderful footage; an interview with Heinz Berger, the designer of  mid-century playscapes in the city of Vancouver c. 1968.  Note the intentional use of the word ‘playscape’ rather than ‘playground’, and particularly look at how these playscapes illustrate the twin foci of play in the mid-century:  1) avant-garde forms like the biomorphic concrete playhouse and 2) natural materials in adventurous configurations such as the fort and the timber scrambles.  Much like today’s playground milieu!  It’s a pity we’re just now getting back to these ideas after a long detour through plastics and platforms.

From the City of Vancouver archives.  Also don’t miss this vintage footage of play activities held at the parks in Vancouver in the mid-century, particularly the traffic school feature at 24:00.  Thanks James!

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If you noticed the seesaw made from stumps in the video of the Vancouver playscapes, see also a self-constructed version at the blog plain and joyful living.  Instructions are from the book The Children’s Year: Seasonal Crafts and Clothes (Hawthorn Press)…a lovely DIY project for the natural playscape.
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The post Stump Seesaws appeared first on Playscapes.

Which is not to compare to this fabulous sculpted seesaw from late 18th century Germany, found at the blog 50watts, from the book Children’s Toys of Bygone Days: A History of Playthings of All Peoples from Prehistoric Times to the XIXth Century by Karl Grober, English version by Philip Hereford. London, 1928.  I have just ordered this book and can’t WAIT to read it.

P.S.  Thanks, readers,  for letting me know that the pictures on the posts aren’t coming through correctly on the RSS feed/feedburner emails.  Working on it!

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One of the current issues in playground design is that even when a playground is available, kids often don’t play long enough–they don’t reach the 20 minutes of vigorous play best for health benefits and combating obesity.  Sometimes that means the playground simply isn’t well designed.  But there are other ways to think about encouraging longer play times, and Copenhagen based Play IT sound have developed an “interactive sound device that brings traditional swings into the digital age” whose music and applause  ’reward’  longer and more active play.  “After a certain time on the swing and/or when the child reaches a certain height he or she is rewarded with a sound experience. When reaching the next level another sound will be triggered.”

I love that it’s solar powered,  and can be added onto existing equipment!  I’m sure there will be some discussion about whether more sounds/these sounds are desirable in the playscape.  But all kinds of creative thinking are needed to make the playgrounds of the future better than those of the past,  and to keep kids playing better longer…thanks to Jonas for sending this in!  Son-X has been nominated for a Design to improve Life award here.

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Noa Haim of Collective Paper Aesthetics designed this amazing project:  a  gigantic ‘spaceship’  playhouse whose individual components are simple folded cardboard stools.  Sit on OR build with, what a combination!

“● Spaceship HEART is a public playground made from individual Kid’s stools   ● 100% Cardboard   ● Assemble and disassemble using hands only”

The system was  initially designed for the Shenzhen and Hong Kong bi-city biennale of urbanism architecture 2011 and then re constructed for IX Semana de la Arquitectura, Madrid, then folded and un-folded in a single day at the Victoria & Albert museum, London.  The stools can be utilized in large and small scale assemblies, and customized with an institution’s name or logo.

Upcoming events include workshops at Shibaura House June 8^th and Omotesando Hills June 9th, Tokyo, Japan.  The workshop in Shibaura House will be accompanied by a public debate about playground planning with architect Mikiko Endo… now that’s a workshop I’d love to attend!

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Keeping the play at ‘hand’ level for sight-impaired children at the New York Association of the Blind, c. 1917.  From the Museum of the City of New York; unknown photographer.

The post Rooftop Sand Table, New York City, 1917 appeared first on Playscapes.

It’s been great to see the attention given to play recently by museums like MoMA and the Carnegie Museum of Art,  and last year Denmark’s Museum of Art in Public Spaces (what a great idea for a museum, btw!)  staged Wanna Play!–combining “a retrospective view of a fine and original tradition within Danish art – art playgrounds in the public space – with an experimental approach to exhibition practices, specifically in the form of a giant indoor playground created by six artists in the museum’s top floor.”

“WANNA PLAY! looks at how restrictions and rules makes it difficult to create truly wild, artistic playgrounds. Many of us remember the special thrill of that really good slide, the sensational see-saw, and so on, but times have changed: gone are the days of innocence where children could scamper around junk playgrounds, mount swings without having special safety surfaces underneath, etc. Today we are preoccupied with rules and regulations, with the letter of the law and the potential liabilities associated with any mishaps; all this is an impediment to establishing ”wild” playgrounds.Nevertheless, the issue is highly topical in connection with the City of Copenhagen’s project Plads Til Leg (literally “Grounds for Play”), which encompasses five art playgrounds so far, created by Randi & Katrine, Nina Saunders, Peter Land, Eva Steen Christensen, and Tanja Rau, respectively.

More on Copenhagen’s exciting project next week!

The post Wanna Play!, Museum for kunst i det offentlige rum, Denmark, 2012 appeared first on Playscapes.

In 2008-2010, the city of Copenhagen commissioned five playgrounds from contemporary artists as part of an overall refurbishment of the city’s 125 play spaces.    It resulted in a forest of triangular trees presided over by a geometric owl (by Randi and Katrine), an outdoor living room with a melting sofa and a television ‘theatre’ (by Nina Saunders), a harlequin-painted refurbishment of an older wooden playset (by Tanya Rau), a  brass-knuckle climbing wall with barrel-stave rockers (by Eva Steen Christensen) and and…a climbable head (by Peter Land)

The most compelling work in the set is of course the head and hands by Peter Land, who is “well-known for his humorous and often self-ironic video art, productions which explore the absurdity of life and man’s frequently failed conduct in the world” [source]  I admit to feeling ambivalent about it…is the subject crying?  Drowning?  It would have scared me as a child, but then I was a timid child.   The doyenne of Danish play (and early champion of the natural playground) Helle Nebelong comments on it in a gentle critique here.  Regardless, it is beautifully executed by Monstrum, one of today’s premier play makers, and I can’t help but love that you can climb into the head,  perch in its ‘brain’ and look out through its prismatic eyes.

Playground trend alert!  Expect to see more cities taking up the art playground approach.  Copenhagen has already been approached by the city of Seoul to learn about the Kunstlegepladser.

Find a map to each playground in a Danish language review at Born i byen.

Further information can be found in an interview with the Kunstlegepladser project’s director (also in Danish) here.

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More playground art by Peter Land…this is In the Grass.

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In writing the post about the new art playground at Nikolaj Plads, I was intrigued by the mention of a previous peacock slide on the site.  Turns out this was a work by Danish sculptor Gunnar Westman (so in a way, the whole art playground thing is hardly a new idea!)  who was also responsible for five play sculptures at Tivoli and two large wooden figures for the Danish pavilion playground at the New York World’s fair in 1964-65.   And apparently also a roller coaster at the Nikolaj Plads site!   I’ve been unable to trace these, so get in touch if you have memories/photos.

The peacock, beloved by the children of Copenhagen, was in such deteriorated condition that it could no longer remain in place, but it was passed to  Gunnar Westman’s daughter Inge Lise Westman, also an artist, and restored through funding from the New Carlsberg Foundation, with plans to reinstall the slide in the Royal Horticultural Society Garden at Frederiksberg where it will have the chance to commune with the live peacocks that roam the grounds.  [source]

[Images of the peacock slide are by Sandra Hoj from her blog Classic Copenhagen which always makes me want to pack up and move to Denmark!]

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Also at Tivoli, this playable fish sculpture by Slovenian artist  Vladimira Bratuz Furlan.  A lovely combination of arch, tunnel, resting spot/house, and even climbability that deserves a more sympathetic site!  [source]

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