natural environments
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…
Seven Best Waterfront Playgrounds
For many of us, the allure of a waterfront begins in childhood. We remember gazing out at the waves and brightly colored boats, the piers and jetties that stretch into the water. We carry with us a sense of the infinite, made visible in the vast, unfathomable distances of the…
Seven Ways to Incorporate Nature in Playground Design: A Case Study of Indian Boundary Park
Yesterday, while scrolling through some photos, I came across one that made me smile, a candid shot of my son and his newfound playmate scrambling over riding horse structures at Indian Boundary Park, a 13-acre park in Chicago’s West Ridge neighborhood named for an actual boundary line between the US…
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: Lynn Wolff of Copley Wolff Design Group
Shortly before they co-founded Copley Wolff Design Group, Lynn Wolff asked John Copley to describe his childhood. They were both teaching at Boston Architecture College at the time, and had a standing Tuesday meeting to discuss their classes and projects. Ms. Wolff’s question wasn’t that unusual. The surprise came, mid-sentence,…
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,…
The 6 Best Parks and Playgrounds for Seniors
Jared Diamond, an American scientist known for popular science books, such as Guns, Germs, and Steel and The World Until Yesterday, gave an interesting 2013 TedTalk concerning the wide differences in how societies regard senior citizens. As he mentions in the talk, one way these differences are manifest is in filial…
Designer Spotlight: Hitchcock Design Group
One of my favorite places to go for a walk is the Spruce Plot at the Morton Arboretum, outside Chicago. There is a perceptible hush and temperature drop on entering the forest, as though you’ve been transported to another time and place. A grid of towering spruces crowds out the…
The 7 Best Playgrounds of 2016
The days of monkey bars suspended over pea gravel are far behind us. But the evolution of playgrounds is happening so fast, and in such varied ways, the change can seem dizzying. Certainly one of the biggest trends of 2016 is the growing popularity of fitness-focused playgrounds designed for older…
The World’s Top Five Outdoor Classrooms
A few months ago, the published results of a four-year demonstration study of 40,000 children across South West England conducted by Plymouth University, found both students and teachers to be happier, more engaged in the learning process, and more enthusiastic about coming to school after spending time in outdoor environments….
8 Must-Visit New Orleans Parks and Playgrounds
With the 2016 ASLA Annual Meeting and Expo still fresh in our minds, it seems fitting to wish farewell to New Orleans with a look at some of its best parks, gardens, and playgrounds. What better judge than the people of New Orleans? In this week’s blog, we scour a…
Designer Spotlight – H Nyunny Kim of Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates
“Who needs to escape the city when you can walk down the street or take the F train to Jay Street or the No. 22 to Clark Street or the B63 bus that goes right to Pier 6 at Atlantic Avenue — and see nature in the city.” That’s Anne…
