Year: 2019
Four & One Landscape Architecture Wins Crazy Maze!
Professionals attend the ASLA Conference on Landscape Architecture for all sorts of reasons. But Christie Passler and Tara Klein, the co-founders of the Houston-based firm 4&1, arrived at this year’s annual meeting and expo in San Diego with a specific purpose in mind: to survey the expo floor for intriguing…
Curvy Blocks Unite Young and Old
In February, we profiled Coryn Kempster and Julia Jamrozik, founders of an emerging multidisciplinary architecture practice whose arresting play structures reconsider the form and context of traditional playground elements. Winners of the League Prize of the Architectural League of New York in 2018, the inventive duo designed a circular swingset…
Crazy Maze Giveaway at 2019 ASLA Conference in San Diego
Crazy Maze – Fun for all ages! It’s time for this year’s annual meeting of landscape architect and allied professionals, and as ASLA President Shawn Kelly notes in the president’s letter, several things have changed. For one, the name. Now known as the 2019 ASLA Conference on Landscape Architecture (formerly ASLA Annual Meeting and Expo) the new…
Leadership Profile: Stephanie Perler Garst, executive director of the US Play Coalition, on raising the value of play
For many of us, the opportunity to play—to improvise and imagine, to do something for its sheer enjoyment rather than any practical purpose— may come as the exceptional moment in the day. But Stephanie Perler Garst, executive director of the US Play Coalition, would like to see play become “more…
Outdoor Water Laboratories Gaining Ground
When you think of a water playground, your mind might conjure images of a splash pad. Fountains spraying jets of water. Children running past open-mouthed animals or cartoon characters, laughing and shrieking as they get soaked. And, indeed, this is one version of water play—and not a bad way for…
Ben & Jerry’s Factory Playground Embraces Old and New
The quirky, bohemian vibe of the Ben & Jerry’s brand, and the pastoral location of the company’s main factory on a 48-acre Waterbury, Vermont property in the shadows of the Worcester Mountain Range, are the stuff of dreams for a playground designer. Nearly two decades ago, Jonathan Henke, a former…
How an Office Slide is Adding Fun and Excitement at a Cybersecurity Firm
If you’ve ever worked in a dreary office, you know the feeling of being uninspired. The route from the front door to your desk feels sterile and rehearsed. The carpet looks the same. Your cubicle looks the same. Your neighboring co-worker has a new pair of shoes, maybe a new…
How a Parkour Course Revived an Aging Playground
Sometimes the best playground designs result from tight constraints. Six years ago, students and staff at Amigos School, a pre-K-8 Spanish and English immersion school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, moved into a new home. The former administrative building at 15 Upton Street had good bones and the size to accommodate more…
Euroflex Balls and Half Balls: Play, Sit, Behold
Materials are an important aspect of what makes a play space feel welcoming. Children are drawn to spaces they can explore through touch, to tactile shapes and forms that spark the imagination. It doesn’t take much. A box. A ball of yarn. A ball. With only a few small cues,…
Going Deep with G Cody QJ Goldberg, Founder of Harper’s Playground
G Cody QJ Goldberg has had an interesting career, to say the least. The child of bonafide San Francisco hippies, he earned a BFA in film and television studies at New York University, spent a year playing drums with a band of gypsies in Mexico, and worked on branding campaigns…
The 6 Best Sculptural Playgrounds
If the playspaces finding their way to the “best-of” lists of publications such as Business Insider, Mental Floss, and Land 8 are a sign of the future, the days of the humdrum platform-and-beam playground are in short supply. Whether found in Copenhagen, Sydney, or Memphis, the world’s best playgrounds are…
Making Music in Parks and Botanic Gardens
Music and nature have long been sympathetic partners. The tradition of music in gardens reaches back to the open-air rites and communal celebrations of indigenous groups worldwide, and continues today at parks, university campuses, public memorials, and botanic gardens. Here we look at several ways the experience of music in…
