sensory play
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…
Four & One Landscape Architecture Wins Crazy Maze!
Professionals attend the ASLA Conference on Landscape Architecture for all sorts of reasons. But Christie Passler and Tara Klein, the co-founders of the Houston-based firm 4&1, arrived at this year’s annual meeting and expo in San Diego with a specific purpose in mind: to survey the expo floor for intriguing…
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…
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…
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…
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…
