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…
Recess is Making a Comeback: Now Required by Law in Five States
The unique swing options add a level of fun for every child! Twenty minutes is the amount of time it takes to eat breakfast or do a short exercise routine. It’s also the amount of time elementary school children in Florida, Rhode Island, Missouri, and New Jersey have for recess, at a minimum, as mandated by recent changes to state laws. The promise…
The Children’s School of Oak Park: Nature-Play on a Paved Courtyard and a Tiny Budget
The Children’s School of Oak Park, a progressive K-8 school outside Chicago, turned their parking lot into a nature play space on a nonprofit budget—a little over $1,000 all told. How did they do it? A grant from the Deep Roots Project was part of it. The volunteer-led Chicago community…
Designer Profile: Architecture Duo Coryn Kempster and Julia Jamrozik Partner with Goric to Reimagine the Playground
Former Herzog & de Meuron architects Coryn Kempster and Julia Jamrozik started a multidisciplinary architecture practice in 2015 with the aim of bringing together their varied interests in visual arts, public education, and architecture.The duo’s work cuts a wide cloth, from temporary installations to permanent architectural projects, from oral histories…
Playground in the Picturesque: The Revival of Frederick Law Olmsted’s Linear Park in Atlanta
Where to begin talking about Frederick Law Olmsted? The life and achievements of the Renaissance man revered as the “father” of landscape architecture are almost impossible to summarize succinctly. But a synopsis of the Frederick Law Olmsted Papers Project, a partially published collection of twelve volumes of journals and professional…
Best Playgrounds and Playscapes of 2018
We bid farewell to the past year with feelings of hope and accomplishment. As we set our sights on 2019, we take heart not only in the varied ways the tools and instruments of play, as defining elements of the public realm, are taking root beyond the playground, but also…
‘Tis the Season for Play: A Holiday Wish List for Playgrounds
With the holiday season in full swing, we’d like to showcase some recently released play options we’re really excited about. We like these designs for distinct reasons. Some uncover the enriching possibilities of the playground for children with atypical physical or cognitive needs. Others are especially innovative and daring in…
