So I’ve been meaning to post this playground for some time but every time I sat down to write it up something kept tickling at the back of my mind.  I felt like I’d seen it somewhere before and finally this week I found the doppelganger in a set of copies I made from Gerhard Aick’s 1962 Die Befreiung Des Kindes at the British Library a couple of years ago.   Unfortunately though, the book gave no information on the playspace , the designer or whether it was even installed.  But it’s clearly been resurrected in  Sydney.  See the resemblance in the angular biomorphic forms (ref that planting bed at the lower left)?

I particularly like how this space uses traditional nature play elements–like streams, hills and ‘boulders’–but in a more stylized, architectonic way that is durable and well-suited to the very urban setting.

And notice that they didn’t shy away from sand.

“ASPECT Studios, one of Australia’s leading landscape architecture companies, has designed a new public domain precinct and urban play space and in Sydney’s Darling Harbour. Commissioned by the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority (SHFA) and Lend Lease, the project is now known as Darling Quarter is a 1.5 hectare place-making project for Sydney with a public park, new cafés, restaurants, bars, 6 star green star commercial buildings (Commonwealth Bank Place), and an innovative children’s playground as its centre piece. At over 4000m² it is the largest play space in the Sydney CBD and with its interactive water play facilities it will strengthen Darling Harbour’s reputation as the most visited destination in Australia.”

More developers should think of using an innovative children’s playground as the centerpiece of their work!

Images from ASPECT Studio; see more of their playground work here.

The post Darling Quarter Playscape, Sydney Australia, Aspect Studios, 2011 appeared first on Playscapes.

The buzz over the movie The Butler reminded me of the unnamed domestic worker pictured in the first of these views of the playground President Roosevelt installed for his grandchildren on the South Lawn of the White House in 1933.  According to press reports at the time, the play space was designed by Mrs. Roosevelt with “one play spot in the sun for cool days and one in the shade for the days when the sun is hot”.

In some of the photos you can only see her arm, protectively holding the ladder.  We know the children’s names–they are Anne and Curtis Boettinger and ‘Sistie’ and ‘Buzz’ Dall–but not hers.

[found at the Library of Congress]

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Though it wasn’t conceived as a playscape, I think it’s significant that once Studio Weave came up with the basic idea of a ‘longest bench’, they worked with students from Connaught Junior School to develop the concept.   This is a great way to think about including children in your playful development; not necessarily tasking them with the grand vision itself, but spending serious time with them to refine and give form to how that vision is expressed.

“The children showed us how they use the promenade, what they think of it, and what it means to them, giving us insights into the site we would never otherwise have. Two important incidents along the length of the site are the two shelters. The children told us they felt these were dirty and unsafe. They were dividing rather than connecting the green and the beach.”

This led to one of the nicest features of the Longest Bench:  the two new shelters that accent the ‘chain’ of the bench like charms on a bracelet.  Each is “made of a strip which forms a simple opening by looping around once. The bronze-finished twisted monocoque forms reach out to both sides, making no front or back. The bench stretches as it approaches a loop and then inside goes a bit haywire, bouncing of the walls and ceiling creating seats and openings. The loop contains the haywire stretch of bench and frames the views each way…the Longest Bench unfolds a series of individual playful spaces and like a charm bracelet, we begin with a couple of charms and more can be added as birthday presents later.”

“The Longest Bench is made from thousands of hardwood bars reclaimed from sources including old seaside groynes (including Littlehampton’s!) and rescued from landfill. This simple component is arrayed to accommodate the complex shapes called for by the form of the wall and the activities which take place along it. The variety of reclaimed timbers are interspersed with splashes of bright colour wherever the bench wriggles, bends or dips.”

Play-ful without being a play-ground…perfect.  

[images and text via Studio Weave, except for the final photo which is by David Barbour via e-architect]

The post The Longest Bench, Littlehampton UK, Studio Weave, 2010 appeared first on Playscapes.

The longest bench reminded me of Jeppe Hein’s work, and since his ‘Loop Bench’ was featured in 2009 he’s gone on to complete more commissions that reimagine the bench as a social and play sculpture.

The yellow ‘Bench Around the Lake’ (2010) is a permanent installation at The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park, IMA – Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, USA.

“A series of different benches create an imaginary line around the perimeter of the lake. As if running underground, the benches intermittently sink into the grass and gently ascend elsewhere. The bench designs borrow their basic form from the typical park bench— elevated upon legs, they provide a base to sit on and a back to lean against. However, unlike ordinary benches, they are altered to various degrees to make the act of sitting a conscious physical endeavor. The line of seating is elongated into multiple visually connected segments, rising and bending with high arches and sharp turns. Their curved and unconventional forms offer not only an opportunity to relax, but also promote conversation between visitors, lending the work an active and social quality.”

Another long bench, the ‘Long Modified Bench’ was installed in a public square of Murau, Austria in 2012.

“The visitor may choose to use the benches for sitting, or instead observe them as works of sculpture by walking around and through their structures.”

Jeppe actually started his bench series with ‘Modified Social Benches 1-10′ of 2005, which have now been widely exhibited.  To the original ten he’s added ‘Modified Social Benches A-K, L-U, and 11-40.  You can see them all at his website.

“Due to their alterations, the benches end up somewhere between a dysfunctional object and a functional piece of furniture, and therefore demonstrate the contradiction between artwork and functional object.”

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Earthscape, natural play-makers in Toronto, Canada, have designed this playhouse from recycled doors as part of a small natural play setting in a daycare.  And they’ve kindly provided DIY instructions so you can make your own (thanks Preston)!  Delightful for the backyard, or any smaller public setting.

If you make one of these, be sure to send me a photo, and to add any feedback, helpful suggestions, etc. in the comment section of this post so we can all learn.  More on other aspects of Earthscape’s nature play work tomorrow.

DIY Recycled Door Playhouse

The doors are the first item to be purchased or found. They should be solid wood doors, exterior grade is preferable. The size of the doors will determine the dimensions of the floor and the height of the structure. If you are finding used doors the opposing doors should be the same width. Door heights are fairly standard but pay attention to that as well especially if using used doors.

Once the position of the doors has been determined the size of the platform can be decided. We made the side approximately 10″ wider than the total width of the two doors to allow for the cumulative width of the three studs and extra  on the outside corners. 

1.  Begin by setting four concrete pads level with each other and set so that the outer edge will be even with the outside of the floor framing. Plan for at least 1 1/2″ pressure treated shims on the pad. Pads for the step (s) can also be set. 

2.   Construct  the cedar floor  six feet wide and 10″ inches longer than your two doors measure. If two 34″ doors were used on the side the length would be 34 + 34 +10 = 78″. 

3. The 2″ x 6″ cedar frame can be laid out so that the outside tip of the of the 2 x 6 is as wide as the floor.  There is a 2 x 6 ridge beam under the the round ridge pole.   Once the size and angles of the sides has been determined cut 2″ off the top tip so the framing will cradle the pole used  for the ridge. 

 4. The doors are resting against  2″ x 2″s which are screwed to the inside of the walls studs. The strips were attached 2 1/2″ in from the edge so the framing would protrude above the door. 

 5. Assemble and brace the A frame pieces. Fasten the studs with screws into the floor and ridge piece.  

 6. The painted doors can then be laid into the spaces and screwed to the framework. 

 7. Attach the cedar post ridge pole. Let the ends protrude if you wish.  

 8. If needed the step can be made from 2 x 6″ cutoffs. This can be set on a pad and screwed to the floor joists.   Build the frame slightly smaller than the 24″ x 11″ tread. 

 9.  The four corners have a cedar log attached which finishes the corners and makes a usable seat. This is notched to fit over the corner of the deck. Fasten to the deck with timber screws. 

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Whew…after many international flights and a broken laptop I am at last back to blogging! And before we leave Earthscapes I wanted to highlight a few details in their natural playground work….careful attention to the details is what transforms a playscape from ‘looks good’ to ‘plays great’, and over the last five years of looking incessantly at playgrounds I’ve really begun to focus on the small things.

Fortunately, playgrounds are starting to ‘look’ a whole lot better, and a whole lot more natural, than they were five years ago.  But the subtleties of playability can be harder to grasp.  So here are some learning points from the Earthscapes work:

1.  A low table with ‘straddle’ seating (arranged something like a spider) is much more manageable for small children than a traditional height table with forward facing benches.  Ever seen a kid try to get their little legs up and over a bench?  Tough, and sometimes leads to falls.   Straddle seats are much better, and they make for fast sitting down and getting up, which teachers also appreciate!

2.  The addition of a short run of fence along the crest of the hill for a hill slide adds another playable feature to that space, and integrates the ‘grab bar’ over the slide into the landscape design rather than having it hang out by itself as an awkward square.  Note that on this slide there are multiple ways up the hill.  There should always be multiple ways up a hill!  It encourages more active play and cuts down on the ‘get in line’ nature of the slide.

3.  Add a track!  I’ve said this alot, but make every effort to include a complete circuit somewhere in your design.  This change alone can lead to much more active play, and it allows high-energy players to race around the truck without bothering lower-energy players in the center.    This is particularly essential in a small playscape (like this one), where the high-energy kiddos tend to just bounce around, annoying the other players.  Give them a track.   If at all possible, vary the track by having some small hills, a change in materials from smooth surfacing to wood decking to bricks or cobbles, maybe a bridge.  Sections of concrete or asphalt surfacing in the track can double as chalkboards, too.

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It is a hazard of writing this blog for five years  that everything now reminds me of something else!   But perhaps that’s good as it dredges up things from the depths of the blog that only the most intrepid or long-standing of you readers may have seen.   Brooklyn artist Michael Clyde Johnson’s “Cube for Children’, commissioned by DUMBO Arts Festival in partnership with Brooklyn Bridge Park, is part of a body of work using cubes in simple pine as austere but still playful outdoor follies (see also his Two Viewing Rooms, Offset, 2012 andOutdoor Seating, Benches, Table, 2013).

It makes me remember one of the very first pieces I posted on the blog that helped me think about playground structures in a new way, this  Thomas Mayer sculpture.  Inspired, both.   Thanks Michael!

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Among the photos in James Trainor’s ‘Lost Taxonomies of NYC playgrounds’ image set is this beauty I’d never seen:  a 1965 sculpted tree by David Aaron that once stood at the Nathan Strauss Houses, 344 East 28th Street.  I couldn’t find any additional information on it…if any of my NYC readers can enlighten me, please do so!

The post Tree Play Sculpture, David Aaron, 1965 appeared first on Playscapes.

David Aaron features in this September 1963 article by Morton Golding in Popular Mechanics, whose rather sensationalistic treatment of playground injuries (“A child’s playground can be decorated with danger”) prefigures the modern hysteria that has led to an emphasis on ‘risk-only’ rather than ‘risk-benefit’ analysis and to playgrounds so dumbly safe that they become unsafe as children attempt to create their own challenges.

As president of the Playground Corporation of America, Aaron weighs in with a recommendation that there be no ‘moving’ equipment on the playground, and proffering modern playground sculptures as an alternative.  This is fascinating to me because I’ve tended to read the history of mid-century play innovation as mostly about artistic exploration of new forms, not factoring in this very practical concern to which play sculpture was an ‘answer’.

Some of the article’s recommendations are now routine:  replacing the traditional wooden swing with the softer rubber ‘belt’ style swing was seen as “the greatest safety advance in many years”.  Soft surfaces–tanbark and early resilient surfacing–are just beginning to be promoted.  In 1963, netted ‘play webs’ are completely new, and bright colors are a welcome change:  ”the equipment is no longer painted a staid black or ‘playground green’ but is finished in bright colors”.  That particular trend has now, after decades of garish equipment, reversed itself.

It’s remarkable how contemporary some of the discussion seems: “some authorities believe that new ‘creative’ equipment is designed mainly to please the eye of the parent”, but ‘”attractiveness gives…a better safety value.  A better looking playground draws more adults…” and even with the safety concerns raised in the article, “It is important not to take the adventure out of play”.  But as for the reference to the “playground men” quoted in the article (and they are all men)…well, change is good.

This is not the earliest playground safety document I’ve seen, but it is an excellent summary of the beginnings of the modern playground safety conversation, and particularly how it related to the avant-garde sculptural forms being promoted by both Aaron and Creative Plaything’s Frank Caplan.  What remains an open question for me is whether the rise of play sculptures was driven by the safety concerns, or whether the safety concerns were just another way of justifying and marketing these ambitious new creations for play.

Worthwhile reading for the play historian!  [All images from google books]

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Monstrum continue their playscapes of mystery with a climbable dragon, a shattered globe, an angry robot, a haunted house, and an owl king and queen watching over their kingdom of fungi and beetles.  So.  Awesome.  To avoid too many photos in the gallery of this single post, I’ll do some follow-ups on the individual sites.  But for now, think about the strong narrative that Monstrum utilizes as part of the playground experience.  All children are imaginative, but a prompt helps ignite their narrative play.

Monstrum’s playgrounds are the physically-engaging equivalent of the Lemony Snicket stories or the Ghashlycrumb Tinies or the Horrible Histories, all beloved by kids.  In those books, and in Monstrum’s spaces,  a child can face existential threats,  meet daunting challenges, and pass through them all to reach safely home. A bit of menace on the playground is a good thing.

The post More Monsters from Monstrum appeared first on Playscapes.

There is a different sort of animalia in Chicago:  the beautiful Edgar Miller sculptures  at the WPA-era Jane Addams housing complex (c. 1938), once part of a splash pad for the resident children.  Since I posted about these back in 2010, when their restoration seemed imminent, they completely dropped off the radar.   But the National Trust for Historic Preservation is now on the case…

“… the managing partner for Roosevelt Square LLC., a development conglomerate that, along with the CHA, is rethinking the site that is known as the ABLA Homes: a roughly 37-square-block area of public housing projects that included the Jane Addams Homes and the Animal Court Playground. The project is part of a larger initiative to reduce “islands of poverty” within the city of Chicago and replace them with mixed-income and mixed-use housing.

“Part of our charge with [the Roosevelt Square project] is assisting the CHA in the conservation of the [animal] sculptures and their reinstallation in the new Roosevelt Square,” says Tippens. “The most important thing to state is that [the statues] are safe, and they are still an integral part of the plan to be restored and reinstalled [in a public park] near their original site.”  Although a formal timetable is still unavailable, Tippens is confident that the development of the new park and the placement of the restored animal sculptures will occur early in the process.”

Color me relieved!  My garden historian self worries about losing these beautiful things.   If you’re a Chicago reader, keep checking up on this for me, okay?  Note that they’re still seeking additional funds for restoration…

[Thanks to David at the Preservation Nation blog for the update!  The NTHP seems to have developed a sudden interest in historic playgrounds, which is nice...see several articles from the last couple of months here.]

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First, meet Julie Klear, co-founder of Zid Zid kids and your Playscapes correspondent for the MENA region (Middle East North Africa)!  This is an area whose play provision I know very little about and I’m thrilled to have Julie posting from there.  You can see her first post here, and she’s also provided us with a wonderful set of DIY instructions for a slide made from recycled cable spools and road signs, based on one she and husband Moulay Essakalli created for the neighborhood children of the Bahraini Art Gallery, Al Riwaq located in Manama, Bahrain.

Before the build, ZidZid conducted a design workshop that included walking the children through their neighborhood to notice the elements of their suroundings, and collecting found materials to make landscape collages.    No wonder then, that a two-story climbing slide–made from discarded cable spools and road sides–was born, inspired by a vintage photograph.  The “Oasis Playscape” for Al Riwaq also included  a tree house, a recycled tire swing, large chalkboard walls for drawing, sand, climbing stumps made from recycled telephone poles, giant silicon pipes used as tunnels and a recycled tire climbing wall.

I’m thrilled to be able to bring you instructions for making the delightful road sign slide!  But it’s not just a slide; clever construction adds a tunnel in the slide’s base and cozy play spaces inside the spool.  You can download full details (with lots more pictures) from this link.

Julie and Moulay are interested in hearing from any other play designers in the MENA region…if you are one, leave a message in the comments!

The post Oasis Playscape and Street-Sign Slide DIY, Zid Zid Kids, Manama, Bahrain, 2012 appeared first on Playscapes.

And in other news of spools, this delightful construction by the Mmofra Foundation‘s Playtime in Africa project.  I love overlaps between play and literacy.

Watch for more from the Mmofra Foundation here soon, as they join our cast of worldwide correspondents.  But for now, go like their Facebook page!

And while you’re there, also check out the new Playscapes facebook page, ably edited by your correspondent Sarah Carrier of Boston, LArch from Harvard School of Design and playground afficionado.  She’s covering Playscapes on Pinterest, too. Go say hello!

The post Reading Spool, Mmofra Foundation, Accra Ghana, 2013 appeared first on Playscapes.

A beautiful abstracted design for a  courtyard by German landscape architects Kuula…if you’re painting your playground asphalt, do think beyond simple maps and twister game boards!

Kuula’s brief was to design around the existing fixed features of the yard and to provide orientation toward numerous entrances and exits while providing a framework for play at both the large and small scales. I think they succeeded.

[via Montreal-based le pamphlet]

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“Observing youngsters…leads to the inevitable conclusion that for children art is play and play is art…the more art in the classroom is like play, the more effective it is likely to be.”

“When children initiate their own activities, they are more often than not group-oriented and eventlike.  Play is inevitably more important than product, and creativity is centered as much in what to do as how to do it…large-scale activities in school tend to involve groups and to be event-centered, and therefore they are more playlike and real than traditional classroom activities.  Teachers are continually confronted by children in the art room who don’t know what to do or can’t think of an idea.  Yet these same children function effectively as creative individuals in a natural play group….working big is well worth trying as a classroom strategy.”

Working Big is billed as teacher’s guide to environmental sculpture, but really it’s about involving children in an appreciation of physical space.  Capturing the ‘emptiness’ of air in tunnels and air cushions, using huge textile tapes to make geometric designs in a field or kinetic sculpture when hung on a line, it encourages teachers to move away from the art paper or art object and into the exploration of the large physical dimensions a child naturally constructs in say, their sandbox and which make art reality.  ”The child is as eager to explore the world of art as he is to explore the real world outside the classroom.   He is as enthusiastic about participating in art activities as he is about the rough-and-rumble of after-school play”.

I would say “can be”…if the art is Working Big!  Inspiring and playful.  By John Lidstone and Clarence Bunch, from 1975, and available for download at publiccollectors.

Vintage copies available on amazon, too.

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So Playscapes is experiencing a huge amount of traffic today;  50,000 page views in the last few hours. I don’t know from where because I don’t track these things but it’s clearly overloading the host servers, even though I’ve increased capacity.  So if you’re having trouble loading or navigating around the site, please just try again…I’m glad you’re here!  Correspondents, you probably won’t be able to load any new posts until this passes.

All best playground wishes,

Paige

The post appeared first on Playscapes.

In the shadow of Anish Kapoor’s..umm…’thing’ (the Eiffel Tower with body dysmorphia) is a much nicer construct:  the new Olympic North playground by Land Use Consultants with Erect Architecture.

If you were at London OpenforPlay in 2012, you heard Jennette Emery-Wallis of LUC describe the plans for the park, and it is lovely to see how they have come to pass.  If you missed it, take a listen, as it’s a far more thorough discussion than I can provide in this post.  LArch students will find her discussion of process and of some of the real life difficulties (utility corridors, deadlines) in developing a site like this particularly useful.

Landscape is central to this site:  the plantings and even the playground itself ‘grow’ out of the landforms left from the Games, in a planting scheme that  evolves from immature hazel copses to a climax forest of pines surrounding the main play area. Pieces of trees form climbing scrambles, retaining walls, and tall nest-like dens overlooking the site and connected by wobbling net walkways.  Look closely in the photos for swings hanging from various parts of the structure, rather than isolated in a bank of swingsets!  There is no requirement that a swing must hang from a metal A-frame, and this integration is a great approach.

I particularly like how the flowing naturalism is balanced by the strong lines of  the geometric landforms and the contemporary ‘cross and cave’ sculptures by Heather and Ivan Morrison…this is a dense urban space after all.    Intriguing log pathways encourage the children to move naturally into and out of the permeable playscape from three directions (no fence!), letting them spill out into the grassy surrounds for more space and games of tag.   Moveable parts and cooperative play opportunities are found in a huge sand and water area whose sluices and pumps hark to the industrial history of the River Lea running nearby, and den building in the hazel copse is encouraged!

Beautifully executed, this playscape ticks alot of boxes for me:  multi-generational, multiple paths and moveable parts, really great planting schemes, local context, sand and water, no fences,  playgrounds-should-not-be-flat,  feel-risky-play safe, and slides-should-be-wide!  Plus there is even contemporary art (see the documentary below about the cross and cave sculptures).  But you know what I most love about it?  The grass.  Lots and lots of grass!  Such a relief amidst the oceans of artificial ‘safety’ surfacing that are being poured over everything of late.  There are otherwise nice playgrounds, btw,  that  don’t make the blog because  of overuse of safety surfacing.  It certainly has its place, but it should stay in it, and the Tumbling Bay Playground limits safety surfacing to areas where it is truly necessary, leaving wide grassy plains and piles of sand that dream of play.

Very, very well done, and a new standard for playgrounds to match.

[images from LUC, Davis Landscape Architecture, and the Old School Garden blog, which has loads of photos of the sand and water play area.]

The post Tumbling Bay Playground, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park London, Land Use Consultants and Erect Architecture, 2013 appeared first on Playscapes.

For your Halloween viewing, a playground worth a trick-or-treat!  The ghost playground of Varberg, Sweden features a spook house with a haunted hall, painted with old portraits of Swedish kings and queens.  Their eyes follow you as you climb up to the balcony.  But if you find it a bit too scary you can quickly take the big slide to escape!  Outside, climb onto the back of a fluttering bat (did that wing just move?!?) or up a twisted tree in the  forest of doom while little white ghosties drift around you.   Hope they’re friendly.

From Monstrum, of course.

And I love the word Spööökitetsparken.

The post Spööökitetsparken (Ghost Playground), Varberg Sweden, Monstrum, 2012 appeared first on Playscapes.

And not the painted-on-the-asphalt kind.  Real ones made with light.  It’s such a cool thing to know about light and color and more kids should see and have the chance to interact with such a beautiful expression of our world.  Peter Erskine creates ‘solar spectrum environmental art’ that would be perfect for the playground….his integration of prism into shade structures is a great way to add fund and educational content to a utilitarian playground item.

Don’t miss Boston correspondent Erica Quigley’s post on the rainbow-making posts in the forest at Manning Elementary School in Jamaica Plain.  She’s working on getting a DIY for this great way to bring rainbows to your playscape!

If you haven’t been keeping up with our correspondents, we’ve recently added Sara Heil Jensen, archaeologist from Denmark, and Sarah Carrier, also of Boston, who as a new co-editor for Playscapes is responsible for the fact that we finally have a facebook and pinterest presence.   And more in the pipeline!  Stay tuned.

The post Things-I-wish-I-saw-on-the-Playground: Rainbows appeared first on Playscapes.

Ukrainian reader Andrey has assembled a delightful collection of playground stamps from across the world; it’s interesting to see how the games, equipment and children are portrayed in dates from 1948 to 2000.  Note that the stamp from Korea depicts the same jumping board seen in this image from 1931.  See all the stamps on his blog (in Ukrainian, but google translate did a good job).  Do you know of others?  Send them to Andrey!

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