creative playground
Pipelines: A Colorful Art Installation About Conservation
The Dynamic Duo The right partner can often be hard to find…professionally speaking. When searching for the right collaborator there are many options, but there are few who share the same vision, sensibilities, values and approach. When it does happen, it can be like capturing lightning in a bottle….
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…
Magical Bridge Is Changing What a Playground Should Be
It was after the birth of her second daughter, developmentally disabled Ava, that Olenka Villarreal discovered how isolating a playground could be. The 34 playgrounds in Palo Alto, California where she lived were all ADA-complaint, but to Villarreal accessibility was not the same as usability. Her quest for a place…
Risky Play and the Study That Fueled a Movement
Meghan Talarowski “I hate taking my kids to the playground.” That’s not something you expect to hear from a person who researches and designs playgrounds for a living. Yet there was Meghan Talarowski on a TEDx stage, flashing a picture of one of those cheerfully colored, boxed-in, plasticized kiddie slides as she…
International Garden Festival at Les Jardins de Métis
In the summer of 1926, Elsie Reford, began transforming her fishing camp on the Metis River into a garden. Located 220 miles north-east of Quebec City, at 48.51º N. latitude, the gardens she created over the next thirty years were the northernmost in the eastern half of North America. Known…
Designer Profile: Joe Frost, The Contemporary Father of Play Advocacy
As a child on a small farm in southwestern Arkansas, Joe Frost played with his friends in the foothills of the Ouachita Mountains. He played war and chase, built dams in the stream behind his grade school, and piled on his classmates in a game called “Dog Pile.” He devoured…
Designer Profile: Michelle Mathis, RLA, Learning Landscapes Design
Eight years ago, on a five-day cycling tour of Berlin, Michelle Mathis stumbled upon her first bonafide adventure playground. What she saw caught her off guard: along several hundred linear feet of boardwalk, children unaccompanied by parents were using hammers, hand saws, and pieces of scrap wood to build forts,…
Why Sand and Water Play Are Good for Children
Long before the iPad and Pokémon GO, there was sand and water. The two are foundational to the earth and offer near limitless possibilities for young children’s imaginations. During the summer months, I take my two-year-old son to Chicago’s Montrose Beach on the shore of Lake Michigan. After laying out a…
The Touch and Feel of Play in Toshiko MacAdam’s Textile Playgrounds
Structures Made from Nets of Rope Inspire in This Designer’s Wonderfully Crocheted Playscapes Toshiko Horiuchi MacAdam video via PlayArt11 on YouTube.com Toshiko MacAdam was already an accomplished artist in the Fibre Arts movement long before she began exploring the possibilities of creating textile playscapes. In fact, she was exhibiting a…
Learning by Playing: Cause & Effect Has Never Been So Fun!
I have seen children play on many different playgrounds. They are always attracted to anything that moves: swings, merry-go-rounds, spinners, see saws and spring riders. There is something about the action and reaction created that is fascinating and exciting for the child. Not only is the movement stimulating, but they get a kick from making…
