Product Education
Designing Inter-generational Playgrounds for an Aging Population
“Who wants to go to the playground?” Most people would hear that question and imagine asking it to a child. But the reality is that it’s a question that should be posed to people from all generations and walks of life. For the first time in US history older adults…
Don’t Tell Your Secrets to a Whisper Dish
Outside the Woodinville Library, in the wooded suburbs of Redmond and Seattle, Washington is an Exploring Garden with two parabolic dishes that could be mistaken for radio antennas. But watch the children. By now, years after the dishes were first installed, the kids know what to do. One runs to…
The Griff Slides of Erie: Fast, Curvy and Transformational
LEAF Double slide with waves Even before their official dedication last month, the Griff slides of Erie, Pennsylvania had taken on almost mythic proportions. “This is just huge for the Erie community,” said landscape architect Alex Luddy. “That’s shown by all the community involvement we had.” From a gleam in the eye of Erie developer…
Games to Play With Others and Still Stay Safe
50 years ago, a ping pong tournament connected China to the world. Today, the table top tennis game is doing the same for families and neighbors. Social distancing may have put a halt to team sports, but games like ping pong, badminton, corn hole toss and tennis are allowing Americans…
Water Play That Lets Kids Be Engineers
There is a new thinking in water play design that has as much in common with the ubiquitous splash park as a neighborhood playground has with an adventure destination. We noted this trend several months ago in discussing the first season of the water play area at Knudsen Park in…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
Hill and Embankment Slides Mark a Golden Age for Playground Slides
The Evening Star, a newspaper published in Washington, D.C., places the first playground slide at least as far back as August 1903. That slide was a long wooden chute, the bottom about a foot off the ground and the top 12 feet high and accessible by a ladder. Several decades…
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…
STEM Learning through Sand and Water Play
If you’ve been following national education trends with even passing interest, you’re familiar with STEM. The curricular model focuses on educating students across four disciplines (science, technology, engineering, and math) through an integrated, applied learning approach. It first gained ground under the Obama administration’s 2009 “Educate to Innovate” campaign, galvanized…
