Natural Playground Inspiration from Learning through Landscapes

Two lengthy, but excellent videos from SchoolGrounds UK, a part of UK charity Learning through Landscapes, which promotes outdoor learning and play.  The first highlights natural play spaces at primary schools in Scotland, and is one of the best overall presentations of natural play principals I've seen anywhere.    

The sites feature many classic natural play elements with stumps and stones and landforms, but note particularly the fun the kids are having with the pile of straw mulch...an easy addition to any play space, and the simple barrel and pipe features for water and sand play seen at 1:57 and 4:49 and 12:20.    And of course that all-important sandpit, the original playground feature, and still one of the best.




The second is an overview of the amazing playgrounds at schools in Berlin...soak in their innovation, their tolerance for fall heights, hidden spaces, and appropriate risk in general.  Note particularly the use of natural drainage for water play (2:37) so that the playground is actually MORE fun in the rain, instead of being rained out!   More about Berlin playscapes later this week.   

Mirror House Playground Pavilion, MLRP, Copenhagen Denmark, 2011

If you've read the blog for long you know how much I like mirrors and lenses and optical effects (being, by training and inclination, a microscopist) and wish I saw them  more on the playground.  Danish firm MLRP have answered my wishes by covering a utilitarian pavilion next to the Tower Playground with funhouse mirrors of polished stainless steel sheets. They turn the previously bland, graffiti-covered structure into a place to explore perspective and reflection, and laugh at oneself! 

"Instead of a typical closed gable facade, the mirrored gables creates a sympathetic transition between built and landscape and reflects the surrounding park, playground and activity. Windows and doors are integrated in the wood-clad facade behind facade shutters with varied bent mirror panel effects. At night the shutters are closed making the building anonymous. During the day the building opens up, attracting the children who enjoy seeing themselves transformed in all directions.

With simple means it has succeeded to transform an existing, sad and anonymous building to a unique and respectful installation in the newly renovated park. The roof and facade is clad with heat-modified sustainable wood and the gables and shutters are clad with mirror polished stainless steel. The Mirror House is a flexible space and restrooms, used by kindergarten classes."

[Images by Laura Stamer, via MLRP.  See the mirror house project on the MLRP website for more details; and thanks to several readers who submitted this] 

A Roof Party Playground by Monstrum

 

Its official name is Tårnlegepladsen / The Tower Playground, but I like the idea of a roof party...Denmark's Monstrum has struck again, this time with a playground that takes the notable towers and rooftops of Copenhagen and brings them down to the ground, at kid-scale.  Delightful to anyone who has gazed at a tower, way up high, and wondered what it would be like to be up there.

There's the roof of the stock exchange, and the city hall, the round tower, the dome of the Marble Church and the spiral tower of Our Savior's.  A brilliant encapsulation of history, urban context, and imagination.


[All photos via Monstrum.  See the previous post on Monstrum's playscapes here]

Social Sculpture - Playgrounds formed by Players

This idea of social sculpture--works of art that take place in the social realm and require social engagement for their realization--originated with artist and sculptor Josef Beuys in the 1960s and 1970s and has real relevance for how playgrounds were conceived in that time period.   The revitalization of his ideas in the virtual realm of social media means they are also trending to influence the physical environment of the playground again.  

the beginning of Beuys' 7000 Oaks installation via the tate collection

Beuys' definition of social sculpture was more philosophical than, say, Superblue's Giant Knitting Nancy (below), which is nonetheless its intellectual descendent.  Beuys was thinking grandly, about society itself as a giant work of art in which any one person's action changes--'sculpts'--the whole.  He famously insisted that "everyone is an artist" (I often wonder whether those who incessantly refer to themselves as 'creatives' were asleep the day they covered Beuys in design school or if they just don't agree!) and social media has now made his concept self-evident beyond his wildest dreams.

I thought of Beuys this week, during my first experience with jury duty, when a fellow panelist was removed from the courtroom for trying to surreptitiously use her cellphone to photograph herself.  In the jury box.  So she could post it on Facebook.

It reminded me of Beuys because his ideas have taken on a new relevance within social media, with those who ponder how individuals craft their virtual space:  the 'museum of me', if you will, to which my fellow juror was apparently trying to contribute.  Beuys did create tangible, physical works of art, but in spite of the utopianism of his ideals it was deeply introverted; as insulating and insular as the felt he often used as a medium.  And not at all playful. 

But around the same time period artist Allan Kaprow tied the idea of social art creation explicitly to play.   His Happenings of the late 1950s to early 1970s, though inherently temporary, were defined as "A game, an adventure, a number of activities engaged in by participants for the sake of playing”  and some of these, in vintage photos, can still be read as playgrounds or something like. 

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You may be wondering where I'm going with this.  But I don't think it's a coincidence that the adventure playground--the fullest realization before or since of social sculpture in space for play--had its heyday at the same time that these ideas did.   

from the Children's Play Information service archive

Historians are tempted to make too much of the linear transmission of ideas, to seek to draw orderly lines from one thought-leader to the next, to show ideas building neatly one on another like blocks.

But it is always messier than that, and what is more difficult to trace (and therefore write scholarly articles about) is the effect of concepts that are percolating in the wider culture in a variety of places and with a variety of people; part of the bloodstream, the zeitgeist, the idea ecosystem, but no less powerful for being less definable.

half of the pieces of Michael Grossert's 1971 play sculpture could be moved and stacked at will

So I went back through my old posts and my personal archives of play spaces looking for elements of social sculpting, and they were nearly always from the 1960s and 1970s....or from today.   I think today's playground environment, in keeping with wider cultural trends, is going to move once again towards social, but this time as well towards self, construction.  

So, you proponents of adventure playgrounds fondly reminiscing about the seventies (hello, Greenwich conference attendees!) have reason to hope.  

Do you know of more examples of social sculpture on the playground, readers?  I'm interested in how you think the playgrounds of the future could be socially, or self, constructed in new ways. 

Purchase Planning for Play (1968) digital download for $6 USD via Paypal

More Playful Knitting: Giant Knitting Nancy, Superblue Design, London, 2010

For those of you who loved the post about Toshiko Horiuchi MacAdam's crochet playground  here is a Giant Knitting Nancy constructed by Superblue Design in collaboration with Dan Preston (Sculptor) and Holly Packer (Jewelery Designer) for the London Festival of Architecture in 2010. 

Inspired by the knitting toy of the same name, Superblue's vision was to allow visitors to participate in the making of the installation and over the weeks of the festival more than one hundred people added dozens of meters to the structure.

My one disappointment is that this was viewed more as a piece for sitting than for playing, though I suppose that's up to the visitors, who seem to be generally above the target age of playgrounds.  But I'd love to see this in a children's play space; it was, in fact, subsequently installed on the beach at Margate, where it was popular for picnics. 

There are also some great additional pictures of Toshiko Horiuchi MacAdam's Woods of Net playsculpture  here, for more textile-art-on-the-playground inspiration.

Michael Grossert’s 3 Playgrounds, 1967–1975

"While the relationship between sculpture and architecture is still fervently being explored, it is worth wondering why the works that emerge from that conversation are more often illustrious museums or art pavilions than utilitarian playgrounds. If this has something to do with a stemming of pedagogical ardor in this century, it is still—take a look at your neighborhood playground—a shame. As Grossert himself said, his projects realized the idea of the “walk-in sculpture” that occupied him for years. Such ideas have neither flagged nor left the minds of our artists, but they are now usually called installations, their province is the museum or gallery, and their population has usually left play far, far behind."

From Quinn Latimer's review of Michael Grossert’s “3 Playgrounds, 1967–1975″ at New Jerseyy, Switzerland.

Swiss sculptor Michael Grossert contributed three playground pieces to the sometimes delirious playground conversation of the mid-century:  a play plaza conceived as a walk-in sculpture (at top, 1967, recently restored)  a climbing sculpture for a  housing park of thirty yellow, red, and blue polyester stackable elements of which half were fixed and half were left for the children to move as they pleased (middle photo, 1971, still in place) and another,  unrealized concrete landscape intended for the Résidence Grétillat in Vitry-sur-Seine, France which survives only as a model (1974) but has obvious links to his 1976 sculpture "lieu dit" (below).

(see also the exhibition's press release, with additional photos, here)

Thurton Primary School Playground, by its Children, 2011

I really love that I don't have to credit anyone but the 3-6 year old children and staff of the Thurton Church of England Primary School on this post!

Because while I adore custom playgrounds by thoughtful Arch/LArch practices, the notion that a playspace must be designed by a professional (or more often, an equipment company) is one of the worst things that has happened to play.

Looking at Thurton school's playground-creation process, as detailed in a newspaper article showcasing their commendation by both the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) and the South Norfolk Design Awards, is revealing.

1.  They were inspired by an idea;  in this case the picture book “Window” by Jeanne Baker.  "The children explored what they wanted to see out of their own window and what they wanted to adapt in the local environment."

This is completely different from what usually passes for a child-focused design process, in which children are simplistically asked to draw their ideal playground.  The problem with that is most kids only *know* slides and swings and platforms so that's what they draw.   People (adults, too) only choose from what they know, which is why this blog continually focuses on expanding the 'circle of know' about what a playground is and can be.

2.   Experts were utilized, but were not the primary drivers of the design.  "...the children then wrote their own questionnaires for parents, so they could further narrow down the ideas they had. They then met with landscape architects from Norfolk County Council (NCC) and landscapers to find out if some of their ideas were possible. Finally the children presented their ideas in an extraordinary school assembly to children, parents, governors, staff and the local community. The designs were shown to David Yates at NCC and he took something from each design to make the final plan."

3.  The installed design, though executed by the experts, reflected a genuine commitment to the children's goals rather than limited choices from an equipment list.  

The Thurton playscape, constructed by local firm MEO landscapes, now includes a labyrinth and story-telling area, a tiny hobbit-like house next to an amphitheatre and stage, a 'reflective' space, a secret path, a mound for rolling, tire swings, a playhouse and den-making area, and a 'really deep' sandpit.  ('tis true that most sandpits aren't deep enough for serious digging!).

Such an amazing place to play!
[All Thurton photos by Natasha Lyster]

And for comparison-purposes-only, a 'typical' primary school playground.  Make up your own mind which is good for the kids. 

Ball and Loop system for making forts, Chicago Children's Museum and DesignPlay Studio, 2009

 

While we're on the subject of interior playscapes:  Chicago-based Design Play Studio used a system of balls and loops to facilitate fort-building at an exhibit for the Chicago Children's Museum in 2009. 
This is a definite upgrade from the piles of books I used to hold down the sheets I draped over the couch and table as a child. 

I point this out because one of the (many) things I'd like to see change about public playgrounds is the feeling that they are static and fixed.

Adding loose parts helps, but in a way they just serve to point out the inadequacy of what is already there; as in "we-just-spent-$50,000-on-a-playground-and-now-we-need-something-else???"

Why not plan to make the playground itself more adaptable, more fluid?  Why not make it easy to, say, drape the playground with fabric for forts?

UPDATE:  the good folks at the Chicago Children's Museum have let me know that credit for this exhibit is also due to their in-house design team, who developed the ball and loop system by prototyping and testing it with museum visitors.

Outside the Box, Tali Buchler, Zichron Yaakov, Israel, 2011

Tali Buchler (with the help of family and friends) designed and constructed this amazing indoor playscape and modular furniture system for the community center in Zichron Yaakov, Israel that offers more scope for imagination than projects many times its budget and scale! 
  
The center's limited timescale (a 3 week deadline!) and budget led her to think about simple forms and materials that would allow both children and adults to express their creativity; while waiting around for classes to start or end, they can build with the oversized blocks or draw images on the pixel cork wall.

The building blocks are made from discarded cardboard and tape, designed as a modular system of interlocking cubical shapes whose dimensions and proportions of the elements are appropriate either for play or for sitting. A stage is constructed of reused shipping wooden pallets, creating 2 elongated rectangles that can be placed side by side to create a square or a long rectangle, to change the level of the floor in a way that can be used for performance or simply to define a play area.

The cork pixel wall, which refers to the local wine industry, is a 5 meter long by 2 meter tall plywood panel, with 4000 holes that can be filled with colored wine cork caps to create a pixel image.  Inserting the corks into the holes is a good simple motor skill exercise for small children.

The living room uses a series of cardboard sofas upholstered with colorful fabric to create a sitting space.  Each seat is made of 2 "L" shapes nesting; one "L" creates the arm while the other forms the back.  Since the sofas are lightweight, they are often used for play along with the blocks.

I'm currently thinking alot about interior spaces for children as we define the 'children's house' for my church's new building, and I find this incredibly inspirational...may need to include space for a cork wall.  Beautifully done, Tali!

Untitled (but it's a playground), Stefan Wykydal, 2005

Artist STEFAN Wykydal's medium-to small-scale gouaches interpret the surroundings of his everyday life:  community buildings, bus stops, schools and playgrounds. 

Monster Footprints Playground, MAD Architects, Shenzhen China, 2009

 

I get tired of the default to poured-in-place safety surfacing, but this playscape by MAD architects puts it to creative use--making two monster-sized footprints in the middle of Shenzhen’s Citizen’s Square. 

Their careful topography allows for a surprising range of play within a single feature, from solitary musings at the edge of the space to raucous, unpredictable ball games on the puckelball-like 'pitch' of the monstrous prints.

This was a temporary installation for the 2009 Shenzhen & Hong Kong Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism...I wish it could have stayed1

[via archdaily]

More Playground rollercoasters: Kompan's 'Miram'

 

The Danish playground manufacturing company Kompan's 'Miram' play feature provides a coaster-like experience to a child seated on one of its two tracks; kids can also stand up for a skateboard-like ride.

One of Miram's most thoughtful features is the provision of a standing space on either end of the structure for friends or onlookers; allowing the play to include elements of community and performance.

I feature 'equipment' only rarely, but this looks like great fun.

[first image source, all others via kompan affiliates]