Design Ideas
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…
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…
Access is Not Inclusion: The Battlecry of the Play Brigade
A little more than four years ago, when Dawn Oates took her youngest daughter, Harper, to a neighborhood playground in Boston to play with her older twin siblings, she found herself deeply dispirited. For Harper, an eager two-year old born with a debilitating spinal cord injury at birth, there was…
The Shape and Form of Playgrounds
To the curious eye, forms and shapes are everywhere. From turrets and lampshades to clock gears and armadillos, the world is alive with architecture. And it’s reasonable to presume most landscape architects and designers think of playgrounds this way: built or organic works, with a coherent form and structure, and…
Could A Music Playground Be Your Child’s First Instrument?
When children learn to talk, they start by making sounds, then imitating those they hear. Richard Cooke, who has created a family of xylophone-like and percussive instruments for parks, believes playing simple instruments by ear may be a better way for children to begin to learn how to play music…
Modern Offices Borrow a Page from Playgrounds
Wellbeing is the word echoing through the boardrooms of Fortune 100 companies vying to recruit and retain top talent. From the rock climbing wall at Google’s New York headquarters to Red Bull’s reception area that transforms into after-work bar, innovative office designs are radically transforming workplaces and the way workers…
Playgrounds of Culture and Place
Several weeks ago, we caught up with Angelica Rockquemore for a designer profile. Our conversation was illuminating and brought to light an emerging area of interest in the field: how parks and playspaces can serve to deepen cultural and environmental understanding and lay the foundation for the development of broader…
Benefits of Outdoor Activities for Children with ADHD
If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know we’ve touched on ADHD before. It’s important, of course, as a matter of public health and wellness. But it’s also a design concern of growing interest. More and more landscape architects, playground designers, and manufacturers are recognizing their role in…
How to Design a Park to Build Community
Several weeks ago, I had the pleasure of visiting a stop along The 606 for a family night organized by the Trust for Public Land. The linear park, designed by Michael Van Valkenburgh and Associates, is work of art in its own right, a nearly three-mile-long trail for bikers, runners,…
Roof top playgrounds by CAD Details
What You Need to Know Before Building a Rooftop Playground When you imagine a playground you’ll commonly think of an open expanse of freshly cut green grass, shiny new playground equipment, and children laughing. That image, while still promising for individuals in rural areas, isn’t viable for many urban…
How Indoor Play Areas are Helping to Bring American Malls Back to Life
To trace the origins of the iconic American shopping mall, one must travel all the way back to the mid-twentieth century. It was in 1956 that Southdale, the first enclosed shopping space in the United States, opened outside of Minneapolis. Over the next fifty years, roughly 1,500 similar structures were…
How to Make Sand Accessible at Playgrounds
Sand table at Ruth and Arthur Smadbeck-Heckscher East Playground Accessibility is crucial for children who use wheelchairs or other mobility devices to enjoy playgrounds, and a big part of that relies on surfacing. Ground surfaces along accessible routes and maneuvering spaces must comply with the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) F 1951- 99 standard. The standard measures…
